

WAYS O 
WOOD FOL 




BY W* J.LON 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



~Tp1 — 

Chap........ Copyright No... 

ShelL.Ll.3 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



WAYS OF WOOD FOLK 



BY 



WILLIAM J. LONG 



FIRST SERIES 





s> 



BOSTON, U.S.A. 

GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 

©be athenaeum press 

1899 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

Library of Congress^ 
Office o f the 

DEC 6- ^ 

Register of Copyright^ 



49481 

Copyright, 1899 
By WILLIAM J. LONG 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 






SfeCOND COPY, 






To Plato, the owl, who looks 
over my shoulder as I write, and 
who knows all about the woods. 



PREFACE. 



" A LL crows are alike," said a wise man, speaking of 
-^** politicians. That is quite true — in the dark. By 
daylight, however, there is as much difference, within and 
without, in the first two crows one meets as in the first two 
men or women. I asked a little child once, who was telling me 
all about her chicken, how she knew her chicken from twenty 
others just like him in the flock. " How do I know my 
chicken ? I know him by his little face," she said. And 
sure enough, the face, when you looked at it closely, was 
different from all other faces. 

This is undoubtedly true of all birds and all animals. They 
recognize each other instantly amid multitudes of their kind ; 
and one who watches them patiently sees quite as many odd 
ways and individualities among Wood Folk as among other 
people. No matter, therefore, how well you know the habits 
of crows or the habits of caribou in general, watch the first one 
that crosses your path as if he were an entire stranger ; open 
eyes to see and heart to interpret, and you will surely find 
some new thing, some curious unrecorded way, to give delight 
to your tramp and bring you home with a new interest. 



vi Preface. 

This individuality of the wild creatures will account, per- 
haps, for many of these Ways, which can seem no more 
curious or startling to the reader than to the writer when he 
first discovered them. They are, almost entirely, the records 
of personal observation in the woods and fields. Occasionally, 
when I know my hunter or woodsman well, I have taken his 
testimony, but never without weighing it carefully, and prov- 
ing it whenever possible by watching the animal in question 
for days or weeks till I found for myself that it was all true. 

The sketches are taken almost at random from old note- 
books and summer journals. About them gather a host of 
associations, of living-over-agains, that have made it a delight 
to write them ; associations of the winter woods, of apple 
blossoms and nest-building, of New England uplands and 
wilderness rivers, of camps and canoes, of snowshoes and 
trout rods, of sunrise on the hills, when one climbed for the 
eagle's nest, and twilight on the yellow wind-swept beaches, 
where the surf sobbed far away, and wings twanged like reeds 
in the wind swooping down to decoys, — all thronging about 
one, eager to be remembered if not recorded. Among them, 
most eager, most intense, most frequent of all associations, 
there is a boy with nerves all a-tingle at the vast sweet 
mystery that rustled in every wood, following the call of the 
winds and the birds, or wandering alone where the spirit moved 
him, who never studied nature consciously, but only loved it, 
and who found out many of these Ways long ago, guided 
solely by a boy's instinct. 



Preface. vii 

If they speak to other boys, as to fellow explorers in the 
always new world, if they bring back to older children happy 
memories of a golden age when nature and man were not 
quite so far apart, then there will be another pleasure in 
having written them. 

My thanks are due, and are given heartily, to the editors 
of The YoutJi s Companion for permission to use several 
sketches that have already appeared, and to Mr. Charles 
Copeland, the artist, for his care and interest in preparing 
the illustrations. 

Wm. J. Long. 

Andover, Mass., June, 1899. 



CONTENTS. 

Page 

I. Fox-Ways . . . i 

II. Merganser 27 

III. Queer Ways of Br'er Rabbit . . 41 

IV. A Wild Duck . . . ... . 55 

V. An Oriole's Nest 69 

VI. The Builders 77 

VII. Crow-Ways 101 

VIII. One Touch of Nature . . . . . 117 

IX. Moose Calling .121 

X. Ch'geegee-lokh-sis 135 

XI. A Fellow of Expedients 152 

XII. A Temperance Lesson for the Hornets . 161 

XIII. Snowy Visitors 167 

XIV. A Christmas Carol ...... 181 

XV. MOOWEEN THE BEAR 1 87 



Ways of Wood Folk. 



o^Ko 




I. FOX-WAYS. 

JD you ever meet a fox face to face, sur- 
prising him quite as much as yourself? 
If so, you were deeply impressed, no 
doubt, by his perfect dignity and self- 
possession. Here is how the meeting 
generally comes about. 
It is a late winter afternoon. You are swinging 
rapidly over the upland pastures, or loitering along 
the winding old road through the woods. The color 
deepens in the west ; the pines grow black against it ; 
the rich brown of the oak leaves seems to glow every- 
where in the last soft light ; and the mystery that 
never sleeps long in the woods begins to rustle 
again in the thickets. You are busy with your own 
thoughts, seeing nothing, till a flash of yellow passes 
before your eyes, and a fox stands in the path before 
you, one foot uplifted, the fluffy brush swept aside in 
graceful curve, the bright eyes looking straight into 



2 Ways of Wood Folk. 

yours — nay, looking through them to read the intent 
which gives the eyes their expression. That is always 
the way with a fox ; he seems to be looking at your 
thoughts. 

Surprise, eagerness, a lively curiosity are all in 
your face on the instant ; but the beautiful creature 
before you only draws himself together with quiet 
self-possession. He lifts his head slightly; a superior 
look creeps into his eyes ; he seems to be speaking. 
Listen — 

" You are surprised ? " — this with an almost imper- 
ceptible lift of his eyebrows, which reminds you 
somehow that it is really none of your affair. " O, 
I frequently use this road in attending to some 
matters over in the West Parish. To be sure, we 
are socially incompatible ; we may even regard each 
other as enemies, unfortunately. I did take your 
chickens last week ; but yesterday your unmannerly 
dogs hunted me. At least we may meet and pass as 
gentlemen. You are the older; allow me to give 
you the path." 

Dropping his head again, he turns to the left, 
English fashion, and trots slowly past you. There is 
no hurry; not the shadow of suspicion or uneasiness. 
His eyes are cast down ; his brow wrinkled, as if in 
deep thought ; already he seems to have forgotten 
your existence. You watch him curiously as he re- 



Fox -Ways. 3 

enters the path behind you and disappears over the 
hill. Somehow a queer feeling, half wonder, half 
rebuke, steals over you, as if you had been outdone 
in courtesy, or had passed a gentleman without suf- 
ficiently recognizing him. 

Ah, but you did n't watch sharply enough ! You 
did n't see, as he circled past, that cunning side gleam 
of his yellow eyes, which understood your attitude 
perfectly. Had you stirred, he would have vanished 
like a flash. You did n't run to the top of the hill 
where he disappeared, to see that burst of speed the 
instant he was out of your sight. You did n't see 
the capers, the tail-chasing, the high jumps, the quick 
turns and plays ; and then the straight, nervous gallop, 
which told more plainly than words his exultation 
that he had outwitted you and shown his superiority. 

Reynard, wherever you meet him, whether on the 
old road at twilight, or on the runway before the 
hounds, impresses you as an animal of dignity and 
calculation. He never seems surprised, much less 
frightened ; never loses his head ; never does things 
hurriedly, or on the spur of the moment, as a scatter- 
brained rabbit or meddling squirrel might do. You 
meet him, perhaps as he leaves the warm rock on the 
south slope of the old oak woods, where he has been 
curled up asleep all the sunny afternoon. (It is easy 
to find him there in winter.) Now he is off on his 



a Ways of Wood Folk. 

nightly hunt ; he is trotting along, head down, brows 
deep-wrinkled, planning it all out. 

" Let me see," he is thinking, "last night I hunted 
the Draper woods. To-night I 11 cross the brook just 
this side the old bars, and take a look into that pas- 
ture-corner among the junipers. There's a rabbit 
which plays round there on moonlight nights ; I '11 
have him presently. Then 1 11 go down to the big 
South meadow after mice. I have n't been there 
for a week ; and last time I got six. If I don't find 
mice, there 's that chicken coop of old Jenkins. 
Only" — He stops, with his foot up, and listens a 
minute — " only he locks the coop and leaves the dog 
loose ever since I took the big rooster. Anyway I '11 
take a look round there. Sometimes Deacon Jones's 
hens get to roosting in the next orchard. If I can 
find them up an apple tree, I '11 bring a couple down 
with a good trick I know. On the way — Hi, 
there ! " 

In the midst of his planning he gives a grasshopper- 
jump aside, and brings down both paws hard on a 
bit of green moss that quivered as he passed. He 
spreads his paws apart carefully; thrusts his nose 
down between them ; drags a young wood-mouse 
from under the moss; eats him; licks his chops 
twice, and goes on planning as if nothing had 
happened. 



Fox-Ways. 5 

" On the way back, I'll swing round by the Fales 
place, and take a sniff under the wall by the old 
hickory, to see if those sleepy skunks are still there 
for the winter. I '11 have that whole family before 
spring, if I 'm hungry and can't find anything else. 
They come out on sunny days ; all you have to do is 
just hide behind the hickory and watch." 

So off he goes on his well-planned hunt ; and if 
you follow his track to-morrow in the snow, you will 
see how he has gone from one hunting ground directly 
to the next. You will find the depression where he 
lay in a clump of tall dead grass and watched a while 
for the rabbit ; reckon the number of mice he caught 
in the meadow ; see his sly tracks about the chicken 
coop, and in the orchard ; and pause a moment at the 
spot where he cast a knowing look behind the hickory 
by the wall, — all just as he planned it on his way to 
the brook. 

If, on the other hand, you stand by one of his run- 
ways while the dogs are driving him, expecting, of 
course, to see him come tearing along in a desperate 
hurry, frightened out of half his wits by the savage 
uproar behind him, you can only rub your eyes in 
wonder when a fluffy yellow ball comes drifting 
through the woods towards you, as if the breeze 
were blowing it along. There he is, trotting down 
the runway in the same leisurely, self-possessed way, 



6 Ways of Wood Folk. 

wrapped in his own thoughts apparently, the same 
deep wrinkles over his eyes. He played a trick or 
two on a brook, down between the ponds, by jumping 
about on a lot of stones from which the snow had 
melted, without wetting his feet (which he dislikes), 
and without leaving a track anywhere. While the 
dogs are puzzling that out, he has plenty of time to 
plan more devices on his way to the big hill, with its 
brook, and old walls, and rail fences, and dry places 
under the pines, and twenty other helps to an active 
brain. 

First he will run round the hill half a dozen times, 
crisscrossing his trail. That of itself will drive the 
young dogs crazy. Then along the top rail of a 
fence, and a long jump into the junipers, which hold 
no scent, and another jump to the wall where there is 
no snow, and then — 

" Oh, plenty of time, no hurry ! " he says to himself, 
turning to listen a moment. " That dog with the big 
voice must be old Roby. He thinks he knows all 
about foxes, just because he broke his leg last year, 
trying to walk a sheep-fence where I 'd been. I '11 
give him another chance ; and oh, yes ! I '11 creep up 
the other side of the hill, and curl up on a warm rock 
on the tiptop, and watch them all break their heads 
over the crisscross, and have a good nap or two, and 
think of more tricks." 



Fox -Ways, j 

So he trots past you, still planning ; crosses the 
wall by a certain stone that he has used ever since 
he was a cub fox ; seems to float across an old pas- 
ture, stopping only to run about a bit among some 
cow tracks, to kill the scent ; and so on towards his 
big hill. Before he gets there he will have a skilful 
retreat planned, back to the ponds, in case old Roby 
untangles his crisscross, or some young fool-hound 
blunders too near the rock whereon he sits, watching 
the o^ame. 

If you meet him now, face to face, you will see no 
quiet assumption of superiority; unless perchance he 
is a young fox, that has not learned what it means to 
be met on a runway by a man with a gun when the 
dogs are driving. With your first slightest move- 
ment there is a flash of yellow fur, and he has van- 
ished into the thickest bit of underbrush at hand. — 
Don't run ; you will not see him again here. He 
knows the old roads and paths far better than you 
do, and can reach his big hill by any one of a dozen 
routes where you would never dream of looking. 
But if you want another glimpse of him, take the 
shortest cut to the hill. He may take a nap, or sit 
and listen a while to the dogs, or run round a swamp 
before he gets there. Sit on the wall in plain sight ; 
make a post of yourself; keep still, and keep your 
eyes open. 



8 Ways of Wood Folk. 

Once, in just such a place, I had a rare chance to 
watch him. It was on the summit of a oreat bare 
hill. Down in the woods by a swamp, five or six 
hounds were waking the winter echoes merrily on 
a fresh trail. I was hoping for a sight of Reynard 
when he appeared from nowhere, on a rock not fifty 
yards away. There he lay, his nose between his 
paws, listening with quiet interest to the uproar 
below. Occasionally he raised his head as some 
young dog scurried near, yelping maledictions upon 
a perfect tangle of fox tracks, none of which went 
anywhere. Suddenly he sat up straight, twisted his 
head sideways, as a dog does when he sees the most 
interesting thing of his life, dropped his tongue out 
a bit, and looked intently. I looked too, and there, 
just below, was old Roby, the best foxhound in a 
dozen counties, creeping like a cat along the top 
rail of a sheep-fence, now putting his nose down to 
the wood, now throwing his head back for a great 
howl of exultation. — It was all immensely entertain- 
ing ; and nobody seemed to be enjoying it more than 
the fox. 

One of the most fascinating bits of animal study is 
to begin at the very beginning of fox education, i.e., 
to find a fox den, and go there some afternoon in 
early June, and hide at a distance, where you can 
watch the entrance through your field-glass. Every 



Fox -Ways. o 

afternoon the young foxes come out to play in the 
sunshine like so many kittens. Bright little bundles 
of yellow fur they seem, full of tricks and whims, 
with pointed faces that change only from exclama- 
tion to interrogation points, and back again. For 
hours at a stretch they roll about, and chase tails, 
and pounce upon the quiet old mother with fierce 
little barks. One climbs laboriously up the rock 
behind the den, and sits on his tail, gravely surveying 
the great landscape with a comical little air of impor- 
tance, as if he owned it all. When called to come 
down he is afraid, and makes a great to-do about it. 
Another has been crouching for five minutes behind 
a tuft of grass, watching like a cat at a rat-hole for 
some one to come by and be pounced upon. Another 
is worrying something on the ground, a cricket per- 
haps, or a doodle-bug ; and the fourth never ceases 
to worry the patient old mother, till she moves away 
and lies down bv herself in the shadow of a ground 
cedar. 

As the afternoon wears away, and long shadows 
come creeping up the hillside, the mother rises sud- 
denly and goes back to the den ; the little ones stop 
their play, and gather about her. You strain your 
ears for the slightest sound, but hear nothing; yet 
there she is, plainly talking to them ; and they are 
listening. She turns her head, and the cubs scamper 



IO Ways of Wood Folk. 

into the den's mouth. A moment she stands listen- 
ing, looking; while just within the dark entrance 
you get glimpses of four pointed black noses, and a 
cluster of bright little eyes, wide open for a last look. 
Then she trots away, planning her hunt, till she dis- 
appears down by the brook. When she is gone, eyes 
and noses draw back ; only a dark silent hole in the 
bank is left. You will not see them again — not 
unless you stay to watch by moonlight till mother- 
fox comes back, with a fringe of field-mice hanging 
from her lips, or a young turkey thrown across her 
shoulders. 

One shrewd thing frequently noticed in the con- 
duct of an old fox with young is that she never 
troubles the poultry of the farms nearest her den. 
She will forage for miles in every direction ; will 
harass the chickens of distant farms till scarcely a 
handful remains of those that wander into the woods, 
or sleep in the open yards ; yet she will pass by and 
through nearer farms without turning aside to hunt, 
except for mice and frogs ; and, even when hungry, 
will note a flock of chickens within sight of her den, 
and leave them undisturbed. She seems to know 
perfectly that a few missing chickens will lead to a 
search ; that boys' eyes will speedily find her den, 
and boys' hands dig eagerly for a litter of young 
foxes. 



Fox -Ways, 1 1 

Last summer I found a den, beautifully hidden, 
within a few hundred yards of an old farmhouse. 
The farmer assured me he had never missed a 
chicken ; he had no idea that there was a fox 
within miles of his large flock. Three miles away 
was another farmer who frequently sat up nights, 
and set his boys to watching afternoons, to shoot a 
fox that, early and late, had taken nearly thirty young 
chickens. Driven to exasperation at last, he bor- 
rowed a hound from a hunter; and the dog ran the 
trail straight to the den I had discovered. 

Curiously enough, the cubs, for whose peaceful 
bringing up the mother so cunningly provides, do 
not imitate her caution. They begin their hunting 
by lying in ambush about the nearest farm ; the 
first stray chicken they see is game. Once they 
begin to plunder in this way, and feed full on their 
own hunting, parental authority is gone ; the mother 
deserts the den immediately, leading the cubs far 
away. But some of them go back, contrary to all 
advice, and pay the penalty. She knows now that 
sooner or later some cub will be caught stealing 
chickens in broad daylight, and be chased by dogs. 
The foolish youngster takes to earth, instead of trust- 
ing to his legs ; so the long-concealed den is discov- 
ered and dug open at last. 

When an old fox, foraging for her young some 



12 Ways of Wood Folk. 

night, discovers by her keen nose that a flock of hens 
has been straying near the woods, she goes next 
day and hides herself there, lying motionless for 
hours at a stretch in a clump of dead grass or berry 
bushes, till the flock comes near enough for a rush. 
Then she hurls herself among them, and in the con- 
fusion seizes one by the neck, throws it by a quick 
twist across her shoulders, and is gone before the 
stupid hens find out what it is all about. 

But when a fox finds an old hen or turkey straying 
about with a brood of chicks, then the tactics are 
altogether different. Creeping up like a cat, the fox 
watches an opportunity to seize a chick out of sight 
of the mother bird. That done, he withdraws, silent 
as a shadow, his grip on the chick's neck preventing 
any outcry. Hiding his game at a distance, he creeps 
back to capture another in the same way ; and so on 
till he has enough, or till he is discovered, or some 
half-strangled chick finds breath enough for a squawk. 
A hen or turkey knows the danger by instinct, and 
hurries her brood into the open at the first suspicion 
that a fox is watching. 

A farmer, whom I know well, first told me how a 
fox manages to carry a number of chicks at once. 
He heard a clamor from a hen-turkey and her brood 
one day, and ran to a wood path in time to see a 
vixen make off with a turkey chick scarcely larger 



Fox -Ways. 13 

than a robin. Several were missing from the brood. 
He hunted about, and presently found five more just 
killed. They were beautifully laid out, the bodies at 
a broad angle, the necks crossing each other, like the 
corner of a corn-cob house, in such a way that, by 
gripping the necks at the angle, all the chicks could 
be carried at once, half hanging at either side of the 
fox's mouth. Since then I have seen an old fox with 
what looked like a dozen or more field-mice carried 
in this way ; only, of course, the tails were crossed 
corn-cob fashion instead of the necks. 

The stealthiness with which a fox stalks his game 
is one of the most remarkable things about him. 
Stupid chickens are not the only birds captured. 
Once I read in the snow the story of his hunt after 
a crow — wary game to be caught napping! The 
tracks showed that quite a flock of crows had been 
walking about an old field, bordered by pine and 
birch thickets. From the rock where he was sleep- 
ing away the afternoon the fox saw or heard them, 
and crept down. How cautious he was about it ! 
Following the tracks, one could almost see him steal- 
ing along from stone to bush, from bush to grass 
clump, so low that his body pushed a deep trail in 
the snow, till he reached the cover of a low pine on 
the very edge of the field. There he crouched with 
all four feet close together under him. Then a crow 



14 Ways of Wood Folk. 

came by within ten feet of the ambush. The tracks 
showed that the bird was a bit suspicious ; he 
stopped often to look and listen. When his head was 
turned aside for an instant the fox launched himself ; 
just two jumps, and he had him. Quick as he was, 
the wing marks showed that the crow had started, and 
was pulled down out of the air. Reynard carried 
him into the densest thicket of scrub pines he could 
find, and ate him there, doubtless to avoid the attacks 
of the rest of the flock, which followed him screaming 
vengeance. 

A strong enmity exists between crows and foxes. 
Wherever a crow finds a fox, he sets up a clatter that 
draws a flock about him in no time, in great excite- 
ment. They chase the fox as long as he is in sight, 
cawing vociferously, till he creeps into a thicket of 
scrub pines, into which no crow will ever venture, 
and lies down till he tires out their patience. In 
hunting, one may frequently trace the exact course 
of a fox which the dogs are driving, by the crows 
clamoring over him. Here in the snow was a record 
that may help explain one side of the feud. 

From the same white page one may read many 
other stories of Reynard's ways and doings. Indeed 
I know of no more interesting winter walk than an 
afternoon spent on his last night's trail through the 
soft snow. There is always something new, either in 



Fox-Ways. i~ 

the track or the woods through which it leads ; 
always a fresh hunting story ; always a disappoint- 
ment or two, a long cold wait for a rabbit that did n't 
come, or a miscalculation over the length of the snow 
tunnel where a partridge burrowed for the night. 
Generally, if you follow far enough, there is also a 
story of good hunting which leaves you wavering 
between congratulation over a successful stalk after 
nights of hungry, patient wandering, and pity for the 
little tragedy told so vividly by converging trails, a few 
red drops in the snow, a bit of fur blown about by the 
wind, or a feather clinging listlessly to the underbrush. 
In such a tramp one learns much of fox-ways and other 
ways that can never be learned elsewhere. 



The fox whose life has been spent on the hillsides 
surrounding a New England village seems to have 
profited by generations of experience. He is much 
more cunning every way than the fox of the wilder- 
ness. If, for instance, a fox has been stealing your 
chickens, your trap must be very cunningly set if you 
are to catch him. It will not do to set it near the 
chickens ; no inducement will be great enough to 
bring him within yards of it. It must be set well 
back in the woods, near one of his regular hunting 
grounds. Before that, however, you must bait the 



1 6 Ways of Wood Folk. 

fox with choice bits scattered over a pile of dry 
leaves or chaff, sometimes for a week, sometimes for 
a month, till he comes regularly. Then smoke your 
trap, or scent it ; handle it only with gloves ; set it in 
the chaff ; scatter bait as usual ; and you have one 
chance of getting him, while he has still a dozen of 
getting away. In the wilderness, on the other hand, 
he may be caught with half the precaution. I know 
a little fellow, whose home is far back from the settle- 
ments, who catches five or six foxes every winter by 
ordinary wire snares set in the rabbit paths, where 
foxes love to hunt. 

In the wilderness one often finds tracks in the 
snow, telling how a fox tried to catch a partridge 
and only succeeded in frightening it into a tree. 
After watching a while hungrily, — one can almost 
see him licking his chops under the tree, — he trots 
off to other hunting grounds. If he were an educated 
fox he would know better than that. 

When an old New England fox in some of his 
nightly prowlings discovers a flock of chickens roost- 
ing in the orchard, he generally gets one or two. 
His plan is to come by moonlight, or else just at 
dusk, and, running about under the tree, bark sharply 
to attract the chickens' attention. If near the house, 
he does this by jumping, lest the dog or the farmer 
hear his barking. Once they have begun to flutter 



Fox -Ways. 17 

and cackle, as they always do when disturbed, he 
begins to circle the tree slowly, still jumping and 
clacking his teeth. The chickens crane their necks 
down to follow him. Faster and faster he goes, 
racing in small circles, till some foolish fowl grows 
dizzy with twisting her head, or loses her balance and 
tumbles down, only to be snapped up and carried off 
across his shoulders in a twinkling. 

But there is one way in which fox of the wilderness 
and fox of the town are alike easily deceived. Both 
are very fond of mice, and respond quickly to the 
squeak, which can be imitated perfectly by drawing 
the breath in sharply between closed lips. The next 
thing, after that is learned, is to find a spot in which 
to try the effect. 

Two or three miles back from almost all New Eng- 
land towns are certain old pastures and clearings, 
long since run wild, in which the young foxes love to 
meet and play on moonlight nights, much as rabbits 
do, though in a less harum-scarum way. When well 
fed, and therefore in no hurry to hunt, the heart of a 
young fox turns naturally to such a spot, and to fun 
and capers. The playground may easily be found by 
following the tracks after the first snowfall. (The 
knowledge will not profit you probably till next 
season ; but it is worth finding and remembering.) 
If one goes to the place on some still, bright night in 



1 8 Ways of Wood Folk. 

autumn, and hides on the edge of the open, he stands 
a good chance of seeing two or three foxes playing 
there. Only he must himself be still as the night ; 
else, should twenty foxes come that way, he will 
never see one. 

It is always a pretty scene, the quiet opening in 
the woods flecked with soft gray shadows in the 
moonlight, the dark sentinel evergreens keeping 
silent watch about the place, the w T ild little creatures 
playing about among the junipers, flitting through 
light and shadow, jumping over each other and tum- 
bling about in mimic warfare, all unconscious of a 
spectator as the foxes that played there before the 
white man came, and before the Indians. Such 
scenes do not crowd themselves upon one. He must 
wait long, and love the woods, and be often disap- 
pointed ; but w T hen they come at last, they are worth 
all the love and the watching. And when the foxes 
are not there, there is always something else that is 
beautiful. — 

Now squeak like a mouse, in the midst of the play. 
Instantly the fox nearest you stands, with one foot up, 
listening. Another squeak, and he makes three or 
four swift bounds in your direction, only to stand 
listening again ; he has n't quite located you. Care- 
ful now ! don't hurry ; the longer you keep him wait- 
ing, the more certainly he is deceived. Another 





**v..- 



Fox -Ways. 19 

squeak; some more swift jumps that bring him within 
ten feet ; and now he smells or sees you, sitting motion- 
less on your boulder in the shadow of the pines. 

He isn't surprised; at least he pretends he isn't; 
but looks you over indifferently, as if he were used to 
finding people sitting on that particular rock. Then 
he trots off with an air of having forgotten something. 
With all his cunning he never suspects you of being 
the mouse. That little creature he believes to be 
hiding under the rock ; and to-morrow night he will 
very likely take a look there, or respond to your 
squeak in the same way. 

It is only early in the season, generally before the 
snow blows, that one can see them playing ; and 
it is probably the young foxes that are so eager for 
this kind of fun. Later in the season — either because 
the cubs have lost their playfulness, or because they 
must hunt so diligently for enough to eat that there 
is no time for play — they seldom do more than take 
a gallop together, with a playful jump or two, before 
going their separate ways. At all times, however, 
they have a strong tendency to fun and mischief- 
making. More than once, in winter, I have sur- 
prised a fox flying round after his own bushy tail so 
rapidly that tail and fox together looked like a great 
yellow pin-wheel on the snow. 

When a fox meets a toad or frog, and is not hungry, 



20 Ways of Wood Folk. 

he worries the poor thing for an hour at a time ; and 
when he finds a turtle he turns the creature over with 
his paw, sitting down gravely to watch its awkward 
struggle to get back onto its feet. At such times he 
has a most humorous expression, brows wrinkled and 
tongue out, as if he were enjoying himself hugely. 

Later in the season he would be glad enough to 
make a meal of toad or turtle. One day last March 
the sun shone out bright and warm ; in the afternoon 
the first frogs began to tune up, cr-r-r-runk, cr-r-mnk- 
a-runk-runk, like a flock of brant in the distance. I 
was watching them at a marshy spot in the woods, 
where they had come out of the mud by dozens into 
a bit of open water, when the bushes parted cau- 
tiously and the sharp nose of a fox appeared. The 
hungry fellow had heard them from the hill above, 
where he was asleep, and had come down to see if he 
could catch a few. He was creeping out onto the ice 
when he smelled me, and trotted back into the woods. 

Once I saw him catch a frog. He crept down to 
where Chigw r ooltz, a fat green bullfrog, was sunning 
himself by a lily pad, and very cautiously stretched 
out one paw under water. Then with a quick fling 
he tossed his game to land, and was after him like a 
flash before he could scramble back. 

On the seacoast .Reynard depends largely on the 
tides for a living. An old fisherman assures me that 



Fox-Ways. 21 

he has seen him catching crabs there in a very novel 
way. Finding a quiet bit of water where the crabs 
are swimming about, he trails his brush over the sur- 
face till one rises and seizes it with his claw (a most 
natural thing for a crab to do), whereupon the fox 
springs away, jerking the crab to land. Though a 
fox ordinarily is careful as a cat about wetting his 
tail or feet, I shall not be surprised to find some day 
for myself that the fisherman was right. Reynard is 
very ingenious, and never lets his little prejudices 
stand in the way when he is after a dinner. 

His way of beguiling a duck is more remarkable 
than his fishing. Late one afternoon, while following 
the shore of a pond, I noticed a commotion among 
some tame ducks, and stopped to see what it was about. 
They were swimming in circles, quacking and stretch- 
ing their wings, evidently in great excitement. A few 
minutes' watching convinced me that something on 
the shore excited them. Their heads were straight 
up from the water, looking fixedly at something that 
I could not see ; every circle brought them nearer 
the bank. I w r alked towards them, not very cau- 
tiously, I am sorry to say ; for the farmhouse where 
the ducks belonged was in plain sight, and I was not 
expecting anything unusual. As I glanced over the 
bank something slipped out of sight into the tall 
grass. I followed the waving tops intently, and 



22 Ways of Wood Folk, 

caught one sure glimpse of a fox as he disappeared 
into the woods. 

The thing puzzled me for years, though I suspected 
some foxy trick, till a duck-hunter explained to me 
what Reynard was doing. He had seen it tried suc- 
cessfully once on a flock of wild ducks. — 

When a fox finds a flock of ducks feeding near 
shore, he trots down and begins to play on the beach 
in plain sight, watching the birds the while out of the 
" tail o' his ee," as a Scotchman would say. Ducks 
are full of curiosity, especially about unusual colors 
and objects too small to frighten them ; so the play- 
ing animal speedily excites a lively interest. They 
stop feeding, gather close together, spread, circle, come 
together again, stretching their necks as straight as 
strings to look and listen. 

Then the fox really begins his performance. He 
jumps high to snap at imaginary flies; he chases his 
bushy tail ; he rolls over and over in clouds of flying 
sand ; he gallops up the shore, and back like a whirl- 
wind ; he plays peekaboo with every bush. The fool- 
ish birds grow excited ; they swim in smaller circles, 
quacking nervously, drawing nearer and nearer to get 
a better look at the strange performance. They are 
long in coming, but curiosity always gets the better 
of them ; those in the rear crowd the front rank for- 
ward. All the while the show goes on, the performer 



Fox-Ways. 23 

paying not the slightest attention apparently to his 
excited audience ; only he draws slowly back from the 
water's edge, as if to give them room as they crowd 
nearer. 

They are on shore at last ; then, while they are lost 
in the most astonishing caper of all, the fox dashes 
among them, throwing them into the wildest confusion. 
His first snap never fails to throw a duck back onto 
the sand with a broken neck; and he has generally time 
for a second, often for a third, before the flock escapes 
into deep water. Then he buries all his birds but 
one, throws that across his shoulders, and trots off, 
wagging his head, to some quiet spot where he can 
eat his dinner and take a good nap undisturbed. 

When with all his cunning Reynard is caught nap- 
ping, he makes use of another good trick he knows. 
One winter morning some years ago, my friend, the 
old fox-hunter, rose at daylight for a run with the 
dogs over the new-fallen snow. Just before calling 
his hounds, he went to his hen-house, some distance 
away, to throw the chickens some corn for the day. 
As he reached the roost, his steps making no sound 
in the snow, he noticed the trail of a fox crossing the 
yard and entering the coop through a low opening 
sometimes used by the chickens. No trail came out; 
it flashed upon him that the fox must be inside at 
that moment. 



24 Ways of Wood Folk. 

Hardly had he reached this conclusion when a 
wild cackle arose that left no doubt about it. On 
the instant he whirled an empty box against the open- 
ing, at the same time pounding lustily to frighten 
the thief from killing more chickens. Reynard w T as 
trapped sure enough. The fox-hunter listened at the 
door, but save for an occasional surprised cut-aa-cut, 
not a sound was heard within. 

Very cautiously he opened the door and squeezed 
through. There lay a fine pullet stone dead ; just 
beyond lay the fox, dead too. 

" Well, of all things," said the fox-hunter, open- 
mouthed, " if he has n't gone and climbed the roost 
after that pullet, and tlren tumbled down and broken 
his own neck ! " 

Highly elated with this unusual beginning of his 
hunt, he picked up the fox and the pullet and laid 
them down together on the box outside, while he fed 
his chickens. 

When he came out, a minute later, there was the 
box and a feather or two, but no fox and no pullet. 
Deep tracks led out of the yard and up over the hill 
in flying jumps. Then it dawned upon our hunter 
that Reynard had played the possum-game on him, 
getting away with a whole skin and a good dinner. 

There was no need to look farther for a good fox 
track. Soon the music of the hounds went ringing 



Fox -IV ays. 25 

over the hill and down the hollow; but though the 
dogs ran true, and the hunter watched the runways 
all day with something more than his usual interest, 
he got no glimpse of the wily old fox. Late at night 
the dogs came limping home, weary and footsore, but 
with never a long yellow hair clinging to their chops 
to tell a story. 

The fox saved his pullet, of course. Finding him- 
self pursued, he buried it hastily, and came back the 
next night undoubtedly to get it. 

Several times since then I have known of his play- 
ing possum in the same way. The little fellow whom 
I mentioned as living near the wilderness, and snar- 
ing foxes, once caught a black fox — a rare, beautiful 
animal with a very valuable skin — in a trap which 
he had baited for weeks in a wild pasture. It was 
the first black fox he had ever seen, and, boylike, he 
took it only as a matter of mild wonder to find the 
beautiful creature frozen stiff, apparently, on his pile 
of chaff with one hind leg fast in the trap. 

He carried the prize home, trap and all, over his 
shoulder. At his whoop of exultation the whole fam- 
ily came out to admire and congratulate. At last he 
took the trap from the fox's leg, and stretched him 
out on the doorstep to gloat over the treasure and 
stroke the glossy fur to his heart's content. His 
attention was taken away for a moment ; then he had 



26 - Ways of Wood Folk, 

a dazed vision of a flying black animal that seemed 
to perch an instant on the log fence and vanish 
among the spruces. 

Poor Johnnie ! There were tears in his eyes when 
he told me about it, three years afterwards. 

These are but the beginning of fox-ways. I have 
not spoken of his occasional tree climbing; nor of his 
grasshopper hunting ; nor of his planning to catch 
three quails at once when he finds a whole covey 
gathered into a dinner-plate circle, tails in, heads out, 
asleep on the ground ; nor of some perfectly astonish- 
ing things he does wh.en hard pressed by dogs. But 
these are enough to begin the study and still leave 
plenty of things to find out for one's self. Reynard is 
rarely seen, even in places where he abounds ; we 
know almost nothing of his private life ; and there 
are undoubtedly many of his most interesting ways 
yet to be discovered. He has somehow acquired a 
bad name, especially among farmers ; but, on the 
whole, there is scarcely a wild thing in the woods 
that better repays one for the long hours spent in 
catching a glimpse of him. 



II. MERGANSER. 




HELLDRAKE, or shellbird, is the 
name by which this duck is gener- 
ally known, though how 7 he came to 
be called so w r ould be hard to tell. 
Probably the name was given by 
gunners, who see him only in 
winter when hunger drives him 
to eat mussels — but even then 
he likes mud-snails much better. 
The name fish-duck, which one hears occasionally, is 
much more appropriate. The long slender bill, with 
its serrated edges fitting into each other like the teeth 
of a bear trap, just calculated to seize and hold a slimy 
wriggling fish, is quite enough evidence as to the 
nature of the bird's food, even if one had not seen 
him fishing on the lakes and rivers which are his 
summer home. 

That same bill, by the way, is sometimes a source 
of danger. Once, on the coast, I saw a shelldrake 
trying in vain to fly against the wind, which flung 
him rudely among some tall reeds near me. The 

27 



28 Ways of Wood Folk. 

next moment Don, my old dog, had him. In a hungry 
moment he had driven his bill through both shells of 
a scallop, which slipped or worked its way up to his 
nostrils, muzzling the bird perfectly with a hard shell 
ring. The poor fellow by desperate trying could open 
his mouth barely wide enough to drink or to swallow 
the tiniest morsel. He must have been in this con- 
dition a long time, for the bill was half worn through, 
and he was so light that the wind blew hirn about like 
a great feather when he attempted to fly. 

Fortunately Don was a good retriever and had 
brought the duck in with scarcely a quill ruffled ; so 
I had the satisfaction of breaking his bands and let- 
ting him go free with a splendid rush. But the wind 
was too much for him ; he dropped back into the 
water and went skittering down the harbor like a lady 
with too much skirt and too big a hat in boisterous 
weather. Meanwhile Don lay on the sand, head up, 
ears up, whining eagerly for the word to fetch. Then 
he dropped his head, and drew a long breath, and 
tried to puzzle it out why a man should go out on a 
freezing day in February, and tramp, and row, and 
get wet to find a bird, only to let him go after he had 
been fairly caught. 

Kwaseekho the shelldrake leads a double life. In 
winter he may be found almost anywhere along the 
Massachusetts coast and southward, where he leads a 



Merganser. 29 

dog's life of it, notwithstanding his gay appearance. 
An hundred guns are roaring at him wherever he 
goes. From daylight to dark he has never a minute 
to eat his bit of fish, or to take a wink of sleep in 
peace. He flies to the ocean, and beds with his fel- 
lows on the broad open shoals for safety. But the 
east winds blow; and the shoals are a yeasty mass 
of tumbling breakers. They buffet him about; they 
twist his gay feathers ; they dampen his pinions, spite 
of his skill in swimming. Then he goes to the creeks 
and harbors. 

Along the shore a flock of his own kind, apparently, 
are feeding in quiet water. Straight in he comes with 
unsuspecting soul, the morning light shining full on 
his white breast and bright red feet as he steadies 
himself to take the water. But bang, bang! go the 
guns; and splash, splash! fall his companions; and 
out of a heap of seaweed come a man and a dog; 
and away he goes, sadly puzzled at the painted 
things in the water, to think it all over in hunger 
and sorrow. 

Then the weather grows cold, and a freeze-up 
covers all his feeding grounds. Under his beautiful 
feathers the bones project to spoil the contour of his 
round plump body. He is famished now; he watches 
the gulls to see what they eat. When he finds out, he 
forgets his caution, and roams about after stray mus- 



3<D Ways of Wood Folk. 

sels on the beach. In the spring hunger drives him 
into the ponds where food is plenty — but such food ! 
In a week his flesh is so strong that a crow would 
hardly eat it. Altogether, it is small wonder that as 
soon as his instinct tells him the streams of the 
North are open and the trout running up, he is off 
to a land of happier memories. 

In summer he forgets his hardships. His life is 
peaceful as a meadow brook. His home is the wilder- 
ness — on a lonely lake, it may be, shimmering under 
the summer sun, or kissed into a thousand smiling 
ripples by the south wind. Or perhaps it is a forest 
river, winding on by wooded hills and grassy points 
and lonely cedar swamps. In secret shallow bays the 
young broods are plashing about, learning to swim 
and dive and hide in safety. The plunge of the fish- 
hawk comes up from the pools. A noisy kingfisher 
rattles about from tree to stump, like a restless busy- 
body. The hum of insects fills the air with a drowsy 
murmur. Now a deer steps daintily down the point, 
and looks, and listens, and drinks. A great moose 
wades awkwardly out to plunge his head under and 
pull away at the lily roots. But the young brood 
mind not these harmless things. Sometimes indeed, 
as the afternoon wears away, they turn their little 
heads apprehensively as the alders crash and sway on 
the bank above ; a low cluck from the mother bird 



Merganser. 3 1 

sends them all off into the grass to hide. How 
quickly they have disappeared, leaving never a trace ! 
But it is only a bear come down from the ridge where 
he has been sleeping, to find a dead fish perchance for 
his supper ; and the little brood seem to laugh as 
another low cluck brings them scurrying back from 
their hiding places. 

Once, perhaps, comes a real fright, when all their 
summer's practice is put to the test. An unusual 
noise is heard ; and round the bend glides a bark 
canoe with sound of human voices. Away go the 
brood together, the river behind them foaming like 
the wake of a tiny steamer as the swift-moving feet 
lift them almost out of water. Visions of ocean, the 
guns, falling birds, and the hard winter distract the 
poor mother. She flutters wildly about the brood, 
now leading, now bravely facing the monster; now 
pushing along some weak little loiterer, now flounder- 
ing near the canoe as if wounded, to attract attention 
from the young. But they double the point at last, 
and hide away under the alders. The canoe glides 
by and makes no effort to find them. Silence is again 
over the forest. The little brood come back to the 
shallows, with mother bird fluttering round them to 
count again and again lest any be missing. The 
kingfisher comes out of his hole in the bank. The river 
flows on as before, and peace returns ; and over all is 



32 Ways of Wood Folk. 

the mystic charm of the wilderness and the quiet of a 
summer day. 

This is the way it all looks and seems to me, sitting 
over under the big hemlock, out of sight, and watch- 
ing the birds through my field-glass. 

Day after day I have attended such little schools, 
unseen and unsuspected by the mother bird. Some- 
times it was the a-b-c class, wee little downy fellows, 
learning to hide on a lily pad, and never getting a 
reward of merit in the shape of a young trout till they 
hid so well that the teacher (somewhat over-critical, I 
thought) was satisfied. Sometimes it was the bacca- 
laureates that displayed their talents to the unbidden 
visitor, flashing out of sight, cutting through the water 
like a ray of light, striking a young trout on the bottom 
with the rapidity and certainty almost of the teacher. 
It was marvelous, the diving and swimming; and 
mother bird looked on and quacked her approval of 
the young graduates. — That is another peculiarity: 
the birds are dumb in winter; they find their voice 
only for the young. 

While all this careful training is going on at home, 
the drake is off on the lakes somewhere with his boon 
companions, having a good time, and utterly neglect- 
ful of parental responsibility. Sometimes I have 
found clubs of five or six, gay fellows all; living by 
themselves at one end of a big lake w r here the fish- 



Merganser. 33 

ing was good. All summer long they roam and gad 
about, free from care, and happy as summer campers, 
leaving mother birds meanwhile to feed and educate 
their offspring. Once only have I seen a drake shar- 
ing in the responsibilities of his family. I watched 
three days to find the cause of* his devotion ; but he 
disappeared the third evening, and I never saw him 
again. Whether the drakes are lazy and run away, 
or whether they have the atrocious habit of many 
male birds and animals of destroying their young, 
and so are driven away by the females, I have not 
been able to find out. 

These birds are very destructive on the trout 
streams ; if a summer camper spare them, it is 
because of his interest in the young, and especially 
because of the mother bird's devotion. When the 
recreant drake is met with, however, he goes promptly 
onto the bill of fare, with other good things. 

Occasionally one overtakes a brood on a rapid 
river. Then the poor birds are distressed indeed. 
At the first glimpse of the canoe they are off, churn- 
ing the water into foam in their flight. Not till they 
are out of sight round the bend do they hear the cluck 
that tells them to hide. Some are slow in finding 
a hiding place on the strange waters. The mother 
bird hurries them. They are hunting in frantic haste 
when round the bend comes the swift-gliding canoe. 



34 Ways of Wood Folk. 

With a note of alarm they are all off again, for she 
will not leave even the weakest alone. Again they 
double the bend and try to hide ; again the canoe 
overtakes them; and so on, mile after mile, till a 
stream or bogan flowing into the river offers a road 
to escape. Then, like a flash, the little ones run in 
under shelter of the banks, and glide up stream noise- 
lessly, while mother bird flutters on down the river 
just ahead of the canoe. Having lured it away to a 
safe distance, as she thinks, she takes wing and 
returns to the young. 

Their powers of endurance are remarkable. Once, 
on the Restigouche, we started a brood of little ones 
late in the afternoon. We were moving along in a 
good current, looking for a camping ground, and had 
little thought for the birds, which could never get far 
enough ahead to hide securely. For five miles they 
kept ahead of us, rushing out at each successive 
stretch of water, and fairly distancing us in a straight 
run. When we camped they were still below us. 
At dusk I was sitting motionless near the river 
when a slight movement over near the opposite bank 
attracted me. There was the mother bird, stealing 
along up stream under the fringe of bushes. The 
young followed in single file. There was no splash- 
ing of water now. Shadows were not more noiseless. 

Twice since then I have seen them do the same 



Merganser. 35 

thing. I have no doubt they returned that evening 
all the way up to the feeding grounds where we first 
started them ; for like the kingfishers every bird 
seems to have his own piece of the stream. He never 
fishes in his neighbor's pools, nor will he suffer any 
poaching in his own. On the Restigouche we found 
a brood every few miles ; on other rivers less plenti- 
fully stocked with trout they are less numerous. On 
lakes there is often a brood at either end ; but though 
I have watched them carefully, I have never seen 
them cross to each other's fishing grounds. 

Once, up on the Big Toledi, I saw a curious bit 
of their education. I was paddling across the lake 
one day, when I saw a shellbird lead her brood into a 
little bay where I knew the water was shallow ; and 
immediately they began dipping, though very awk- 
wardly. They were evidently taking their first lessons 
in diving. The next afternoon I was near the same 
place. I had done fishing — or rather, frogging — 
and had pushed the canoe into some tall grass out of 
sight, and was sitting there just doing nothing. 

A musquash came by, and rubbed his nose against 
the canoe, and nibbled a lily root before he noticed me. 
A shoal of minnows were playing among the grasses 
near by. A dragon-fly stood on his head against a 
reed — a most difficult feat, I should think. He was 
trying some contortion that I could n't make out, 



36 Ways of Wood Folk. 

when a deer stepped down the bank and never saw 
me. Doing nothing pays one under such circum- 
stances, if only by the glimpses it gives of animal life. 
It is so rare to see a wild thing unconscious. 

Then Kwaseekho came into the shallow bay again 
with her brood, and immediately they began dipping 
as before. I wondered how the mother made them 
dive, till I looked through the field-glass and saw that 
the little fellows occasionally brought up something 
to eat. But there certainly were no fish to be caught 
in that warm, shallow water. An idea struck me, 
and I pushed the canoe out of the grass, sending the 
brood across the lake in wild confusion. There on 
the black bottom were a dozen young trout, all freshly 
caught, and all with the air-bladder punctured by the 
mother bird's sharp bill. She had provided their 
dinner, but she brought it to a good place and made 
them dive to get it. 

As I paddled back to camp, I thought of the way 
the Indians taught their boys to shoot. They hung 
their dinner from the trees, out of reach, and made 
them cut the cord that held it, with an arrow. Did 
the Indians originate this, I wonder, in their direct 
way of looking at things, almost as simple as the 
birds' ? Or was the idea whispered to some Indian 
hunter long ago, as he watched Merganser teach her 
young to dive ? 



Merganser. 37 

Of all the broods I have met in the wilderness, only 
one, I think, ever grew to recognize me and my canoe 
a bit, so as to fear me less than another. It was on a 
little lake in the heart of the woods, where we lingered 
long on our journey, influenced partly by the beauty 
of the place, and partly by the fact that two or three 
bears roamed about there, which I sometimes met at 
twilight on the lake shore. The brood were as wild 
as other broods; but I met them often, and they 
sometimes found the canoe lying motionless and 
harmless near them, without quite knowing how it 
came there. So after a few days they looked at me 
with curiosity and uneasiness only, unless I came too 
near. 

There were six in the brood. Five were hardy 
little fellows that made the water boil behind them 
as they scurried across the lake. But the sixth was a 
weakling. He had been hurt, by a hawk perhaps, or 
a big trout, or a mink ; or he had swallowed a bone ; 
or maybe he was just a weak little fellow with no 
accounting for it. Whenever the brood were startled, 
he struggled bravely a little while to keep up; then 
he always fell behind. The mother would come back, 
and urge, and help him ; but it was of little use. He 
was not strong enough ; and the last glimpse I always 
had of them was a foamy wake disappearing round a 
distant point, while far in the rear was a ripple where 



38 



Ways of Wood Folk. 



the little fellow still paddled away, doing his best 
pathetically. 

One afternoon the canoe glided round a point and 
ran almost up to the brood before they saw it, giving 
them a terrible fright. Away they went on the instant, 




putter, putter, putter, lifting themselves almost out 
of water with the swift-moving feet and tiny wings. 
The mother bird took wing, returned and crossed 
the bow of the canoe, back and forth, with loud 
quackings. The weakling was behind as usual ; and 
in a sudden spirit of curiosity or perversity — for 
I really had a good deal of sympathy for the little 



Merganser. 39 

fellow — I shot the canoe forward, almost up to him. 
He tried to dive ; got tangled in a lily stem in his 
fright; came up, flashed under again; and I saw him 
come up ten feet away in some grass, where he sat 
motionless and almost invisible amid the pads and 
yellow stems. 

How frightened he was! Yet how still he sat! 
Whenever I took my eyes from him a moment I 
had to hunt again, sometimes two or three minutes, 
before I could see him there. 

Meanwhile the brood went almost to the opposite 
shore before they stopped, and the mother, satisfied 
at last by my quietness, flew over and lit among them. 
She had not seen the little one. Through the glass 
I saw her flutter round and round them to be quite 
sure they were all there. Then she missed him. I 
could see it all in her movements. She must have 
clucked, I think, for the young suddenly disappeared, 
and she came swimming rapidly back over the way 
they had come, looking, looking everywhere. Round 
the canoe she went at a safe distance, searching 
among the grass and lily pads, calling him softly to 
come out. But he w T as very near the canoe, and very 
much frightened ; the only effect of her calls was 
to make him crouch closer against the grass stems, 
while the bright little eyes, grown large with fear, 
were fastened on me. 



40 Ways of Wood Folk. 

Slowly I backed the canoe away till it was out of 
sight around the point, though I could still see the 
mother bird through the bushes. She swam rapidly 
about where the canoe had been, calling more loudly ; 
but the little fellow had lost confidence in her, or was 
too frightened, and refused to show himself. At last 
she discovered him, and with quacks and flutters that 
looked to me a bit hysteric pulled him out of his 
hiding place. How she fussed over him ! How she 
hurried and helped and praised and scolded him all 
the way over ; and fluttered on ahead, and clucked 
the brood out of their hiding places to meet him ! 
Then, with all her young about her, she swept round 
the point into the quiet bay that was their training 
school. 

And I, drifting slowly up the lake into the sunset 
over the glassy water, was thinking how human it all 
was. " Doth he not leave the ninety and nine in the 
wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he 
find it?" 



III. QUEER WAYS OF BR'ER RABBIT. 

j=s\R'ER RABBIT is a funny fellow. No 
wonder that Uncle Remus makes him 
the hero of so many adventures ! Uncle 
Remus had watched him, no doubt, on 
some moonlight night when he gathered 
his boon companions together for a frolic. In the 
heart of the woods it was, in a little opening where 
the moonlight came streaming in through the pines, 
making soft gray shadows for hide-and-seek, and 
where no prowling fox ever dreamed of looking. 

With most of us, I fear, the acquaintance with 
Bunny is too limited for us to appreciate his frolic- 
some ways and his happy, fun-loving disposition. 
The tame things which we sometimes see about 
country yards are often stupid, like a playful kitten 
spoiled by too much handling; and the flying glimpse 
we sometimes get of a bundle of brown fur, scurry- 
ing helter-skelter through and over the huckleberry 
bushes, generally leaves us staring in astonishment 
at the swaying leaves where it disappeared, and 
wondering curiously what it was all about. It was 

41 



42 Ways of Wood Folk. 

only a brown rabbit that you almost stepped upon 
in your autumn walk through the woods. 

Look under the crimson sumach yonder, there 
in the bit of brown grass, with the purple asters 
hanging over, and you will find his form, where 
he has been sitting all the morning and where he 
watched you all the way up the hill. But you need 
not follow ; you will not find him again. He never 
runs straight ; the swaying leaves there where he dis- 
appeared mark the beginning of his turn, whether to 
right or left you will never know. Now he has come 
around his circle and is near you again — watching 
you this minute, out of his bit of brown grass. As 
you move slowly away in the direction he took, peer- 
ing here and there among the bushes, Bunny behind 
you sits up straight in his old form again, with his 
little paws held very prim, his long ears pointed 
after you, and his deep brown eyes shining like the 
waters of a hidden spring among the asters. And he 
chuckles to himself, and thinks how he fooled you 
that time, sure. 

To see Br er Rabbit at his best, that is, at his 
own playful comical self, one must turn hunter, and 
learn how to sit still, and be patient. Only you 
must not hunt in the usual way ; not by day, for then 
Bunny is stowed away in his form on the sunny slope 
of a southern hillside, where one's eyes will never 



£>ueer Ways of Br er Babbit. 43 

find him ; not with gun and dog, for then the keen 
interest and quick sympathy needed to appreciate 
any phase of animal life gives place to the coarser 
excitement of the hunt ; and not by going about after 
Bunny, for your heavy footsteps and the rustle of 
leaves will only send him scurrying away into safer 
solitudes. Find where he loves to meet with his 
fellows, in quiet little openings in the woods. There 
is no mistaking his playground when once you have 
found it. Go there by moonlight and, sitting still in 
the shadow, let your game find you, or pass by with- 
out suspicion ; for this is the best way to hunt, whether 
one is after game or only a better knowledge of the 
ways of bird and beast. 

The very best spot I ever found for watching 
Bunny's ways was on the shore of a lonely lake in the 
heart of a New Brunswick forest. I hardly think that 
he was any different there, for I have seen some of his 
pranks repeated within sight of a busy New England 
town ; but he was certainly more natural. He had 
never seen a man before, and he was as curious about 
it as a blue jay. No dog's voice had ever wakened 
the echoes within fifty miles ; but every sound of the 
wilderness he seemed to know a thousand times better 
than I. The snapping of the smallest stick under 
the stealthy tread of fox or wildcat would send him 
scurrying out of sight in wild alarm ; yet I watched a 



44 Ways of Wood Folk. 

dozen of them at play one night when a frightened 
moose went crashing through the underbrush and 
plunged into the lake near by, and they did not seem 
to mind it in the least. 

The spot referred to was the only camping ground 
on the lake; so Simmo, my Indian guide, assured 
me ; and he knew very well. I discovered afterward 
that it was the only cleared bit of land for miles 
around ; and this the rabbits knew very well. Right 
in the midst of their best playground I pitched 
my tent, while Simmo built his lean-to near by, in 
another little opening. We were tired that night, 
after a long day's paddle in the sunshine on the river. 
The after-supper chat before the camp fire — gener- 
ally the most delightful bit of the whole day, and 
prolonged as far as possible — was short and sleepy; 
and we left the lonely woods to the bats and owls 
and creeping things, and turned in for the night. 

I was just asleep when I was startled by a loud 
thump twice repeated, as if a man stamped on the 
ground, or, as I thought at the time, just like the 
thump a bear gives an old log with his paw, to see if 
it is hollow and contains any insects. I was wide 
awake in a moment, sitting up straight to listen. A 
few minutes passed by in intense stillness ; then, 
thump ! thump ! thump ! just outside the tent among 
the ferns. 



Queer Ways of Br er Rabbit. 45 

I crept slowly out; but beyond a slight rustle as 
my head appeared outside the tent I heard nothing, 
though I waited several minutes and searched about 
among the underbrush. But no sooner was I back 
in the tent and quiet than there it was again, and 
repeated three or four times, now here, now there, 
within the next ten minutes. I crept out again, with 
no better success than before. 

This time, however, I would find out about that 
mysterious noise before going back. It is n't so 
pleasant to go to sleep until one knows what things 
are prowling about, especially things that make a 
noise like that. A new moon was shining down 
into the little clearing, giving hardly enough light 
to make out the outlines of the great evergreens. 
Down among the ferns things were all black and uni- 
form. For ten minutes I stood there in the shadow 
of a big spruce and waited. Then the silence was 
broken by a sudden heavy thump in the bushes just 
behind me. I was startled, and wheeled on the 
instant ; as I did so, some small animal scurried 
away into the underbrush. 

For a moment I was puzzled. Then it flashed 
upon me that I was camped upon the rabbits' play- 
ground. With the thought came a strong suspicion 
that Bunny was fooling me. 

Going back to the fire, I raked the coals together 



46 Ways of Wood Folk. 

and threw on some fresh fuel. Next I fastened a 
large piece of birch bark on two split sticks behind 
the fireplace ; then I sat down on an old log to wait. 
The rude reflector did very well as the fire burned up. 
Out in front the fern tops were dimly lighted to the 
edge of the clearing. As I watched, a dark form shot 
suddenly above the ferns and dropped back again. 
Three heavy thumps followed ; then the form shot up 
and down once more. This time there was no mis- 
take. In the firelight I saw plainly the dangle of 
Br'er Rabbit's long legs, and the flap of his big ears, 
and the quick flash of his dark eyes in the reflected 
light, — got an instantaneous photograph of him, as 
it were, at the top of his comical jump. 

I sat there nearly an hour before the why and the 
how of the little joker's actions became quite clear. 
This is what happens in such a case. Bunny comes 
down from the ridge for his nightly frolic in the little 
clearing. While still in the ferns the big white 
object, standing motionless in the middle of his play- 
ground, catches his attention ; and very much sur- 
prised, and very much frightened, but still very 
curious, he crouches down close to wait and listen. 
But the strange thing does not move nor see him. To 
get a better view he leaps up high above the ferns 
two or three times. Still the big thing remains quite 
still and harmless. u Now," thinks Bunny, "I'll 



Queer Ways of Brer Rabbit. 47 

frighten him, and find out what he is." Leaping 
high, he strikes the ground sharply two or three 
times with his padded hind foot ; then jumps up 
quickly again to see the effect of his scare. Once 
he succeeded very well, when he crept up close 
behind me, so close that he didn't have to spring up 
to see the effect. I fancy him chuckling to himself 
as he scurried off after my sudden start. 

That was the first time that I ever heard Bunny's 
challenge. It impressed me at the time as one of his 
most curious pranks ; the sound was so big and 
heavy for such a little fellow. Since then I have 
heard it frequently ; and now sometimes when I 
stand at night in the forest and hear a sudden heavy 
thump in the underbrush, as if a big moose were 
striking the ground and shaking his antlers at me, 
it does n't startle me in the least. It is only Brer 
Rabbit trvins: to frighten me. 

The next night Bunny played us another trick. 
Before Simmo went to sleep he always took off his 
blue overalls and put them under his head for a 
pillow. That was only one of Simmo's queer ways. 
While he was asleep the rabbits came into his little 
commoosie, dragged the overalls out from under his 
head, and nibbled them full of holes. Not content 
with this, they played with them all night; pulled 
them around the clearing, as threads here and there 



48 Ways of Wood Folk. 

plainly showed ; then dragged them away into the 
underbrush and left them. 

Simmo's wrath when he at last found the precious 
garments was comical to behold ; when he wore 
them with their new polka-dot pattern, it was still 
more comical. Why the rabbits did it I could never 
quite make out. The overalls were very dirty, very 
much stained with everything from a clean trout to 
tobacco crumbs ; and, as there was nothing about 
them for a rabbit to eat, we concluded that it was 
just one of Br'er Rabbit's pranks. That night Simmo, 
to avenge his overalls, set a deadfall supported by a 
piece of cord, which he had soaked in molasses and 
salt. Which meant that Bunny would nibble the cord 
for the salt that was in it, and bring the log down 
hard on his own back. So I had to spring it, while 
Simmo slept, to save the little fellow's life and learn 
more about him. 

Up on the ridge above our tent was a third tiny 
clearing, where some trappers had once made their 
winter camp. It was there that I watched the rabbits 
one moonlight night from my seat on an old log, just 
within the shadow at the edge of the opening. The 
first arrival came in with a rush. There was a sudden 
scurry behind me, and over the log he came with a 
flying leap that landed him on the smooth bit of 
ground in the middle, where he whirled around and 



^ueer Ways of Br er Rabbit. 40 

around with grotesque jumps, like a kitten after its 
tail. Only Brer Rabbit's tail was too short for him 
ever to catch it ; he seemed rather to be trying to get 
a good look at it. Then he went off helter-skelter in 
a headlong rush through the ferns. Before I knew 
what had become of him, over the log he came again 
in a marvelous jump, and went tearing around the 
clearing like a circus horse, varying his performance 
now by a high leap, now by two or three awkward 
hops on his hind legs, like a dancing bear. It was 
immensely entertaining. 

The third time around he discovered me in the 
midst of one of his antics. He was so surprised that 
he fell down. In a second he was up again, sitting 
up very straight on his haunches just in front of me, 
paws crossed, ears erect, eyes shining in fear and 
curiosity. " Who are you ? " he was saying, as plainly 
as ever rabbit said it. Without moving a muscle I 
tried to tell him, and also that he need not be afraid. 
Perhaps he began to understand, for he turned his 
head on one side, just as a dog does when you talk to 
him. But he was n't quite satisfied. " I '11 try my 
scare on him," he thought ; and thump ! thump ! 
thump ! sounded his padded hind foot on the soft 
ground. It almost made me start again, it sounded 
so big in the dead stillness. This last test quite con- 
vinced him that I was harmless, and, after a moment's 



50 Ways of Wood Folk. ■ 

watching, away he went in some astonishing jumps 
into the forest. 

A few minutes passed by in quiet waiting before 
he was back again, this time with two or three com- 
panions. I have no doubt that he had been watching 
me all the time, for I heard his challenge in the brush 
just behind my log. The fun now began to grow 
lively. Around and around they went, here, there, 
everywhere, — the woods seemed full of rabbits, they 
scurried around so. Every few minutes the number 
increased, as some new arrival came flying in and 
gyrated around like a brown fur pinwheel. They 
leaped over everything in the clearing; they leaped 
over each other as if playing leap-frog ; they vied 
with each other in the high jump. Sometimes they 
gathered together in the middle of the open space 
and crept about close to the ground, in and out and 
roundabout, like a game of fox and geese. Then 
they rose on their hind legs and hopped slowly 
about in all the dignity of a minuet. Right in the 
midst of the solemn affair some mischievous fellow 
gave a squeak and a big jump; and away they all 
went hurry-skurry, for all the world like a lot of boys 
turned loose for recess. In a minute they were 
back again, quiet and sedate, and solemn as bull- 
frogs. Were they chasing and chastising the mis- 
chief-maker, or was it only the overflow of abundant 



Queer Ways of Br er Rabbit. 51 

spirits, as the top of a kettle blows off when the 
pressure below becomes resistless ? 

Many of the rabbits saw me, I am sure, for they 
sometimes gave a high jump over my foot; and one 
came close up beside it, and sat up straight with his 
head on one side, to look me over. Perhaps it was 
the first comer, for he did not try his scare again. 
Like most wild creatures, they have very little fear 
of an object that remains motionless at their first 
approach and challenge. 

Once there was a curious performance over across 
the clearing. I could not see it very plainly, but it 
looked very much like a boxing match. A queer 
sound, put-a-put-a-put-a-put, first drew my attention 
to it. Two rabbits were at the edge of the ferns, 
standing up on their hind legs, face to face, and 
apparently cuffing each other soundly, while they 
hopped slowly around and around in a circle. I 
could not see the blows but only the boxing attitude, 
and hear the sounds as they landed on each other's 
ribs. The other rabbits did not seem to mind it, as 
they would have done had it been a fight, but stopped 
occasionally to watch the two, and then w^ent on 
with their fun-making. Since then I have read of 
tame hares that did the same thing, but I have never 
seen it. 

At another time the rabbits were gathered together 



52 Ways of Wood Folk. 

in the very midst of some quiet fun, when they leaped 
aside suddenly and disappeared among the ferns as if 
by magic. The next instant a dark shadow swept 
across the opening, almost into my face, and wheeled 
out of sight among the evergreens. It was Kookoo- 
skoos, the big brown owl, coursing the woods on his 
nightly hunt after the very rabbits that were crouched 
motionless beneath him as he passed. But how did 
they learn, all at once, of the coming of an enemy 
whose march is noiseless as the sweep of a shadow? 
And did they all hide so well that he never suspected 
that they were about, or did he see the ferns wave 
as the last one disappeared, but was afraid to come 
back after seeing me ? Perhaps Brer Rabbit was 
well repaid that time for his confidence. 

They soon came back again, as I think they would 
not have done had it been a natural opening. Had 
it been one of Nature's own sunny spots, the owl 
would have swept back and forth across it ; for he 
knows the rabbits' ways as well as they know his. 
But hawks and owls avoid a spot like this, that men 
have cleared. If they cross it once in search of prey, 
they seldom return. Wherever man camps, he leaves 
something of himself behind ; and the fierce birds 
and beasts of the woods fear it, and shun it. It 
is only the innocent things, singing birds, and fun- 
loving rabbits, and harmless little wood-mice — shy, 



£>ueer Ways of Br er Rabbit. 53 

defenseless creatures all — that take possession of 
man's abandoned quarters, and enjoy his protection. 
Bunny knows this, I think ; and so there is no other 
place in the woods that he loves so well as an old 
camping ground. 

The play was soon over; for it is only in the early 
part of the evening, when Brer Rabbit first comes 
out after sitting still in his form all day, that he gives 
himself up to fun, like a boy out of school. If one 
may judge, however, from the looks of Simmo's over- 
alls, and from the number of times he woke me by 
scurrying around my tent, I suspect that he is never 
too serious and never too busy for a joke. It is a 
way he has of brightening the more sober times of 
getting his own living, and keeping a sharp lookout 
for cats and owls and prowling foxes. 

Gradually the playground was deserted, as the 
rabbits slipped off one by one to hunt their supper. 
Now and then there was a scamper among the under- 
brush, and a high jump or two, with which some 
playful bunny enlivened his search for tender twigs ; 
and at times one, more curious than the rest, came 
hopping along to sit erect a moment before the old 
log, and look to see if the strange animal were still 
there. But soon the old log was vacant too. Out 
in the swamp a disappointed owl sat on his lonely 
stub that lightning had blasted, and hooted that he 



54 Ways of Wood Folk. 

was hungry. The moon looked down into the little 
clearing with its waving ferns and soft gray shadows, 
and saw nothing there to suggest that it was the 
rabbits' nursery. 

Down at the camp a new surprise was awaiting me. 
Br 'er Rabbit was under the tent fly, tugging away at 
the salt bag which I had left there carelessly after 
curing a bearskin. While he was absorbed in get- 
ting it out from under the rubber blanket, I crept up 
on hands and knees, and stroked him once from ears 
to tail. He jumped straight up with a startled squeak, 
whirled in the air, and came down facing me. So 
we remained for a full moment, our faces scarcely two 
feet apart, looking into each other's eyes. Then he 
thumped the earth soundly with his left hind foot, to 
show that he was not afraid, and scurried under the 
fly and through the brakes in a half circle to a bush 
at my heels, where he sat up straight in the shadow 
to watch me. 

But I had seen enough for one night. I left a 
generous pinch of salt where he could find it easily, 
and crept in to sleep, leaving him to his own ample 
devices. 



IV. A WILD DUCK. 




HE title will suggest to most boys a 
line across the autumn sky at sunset, 
with a bit of mystery about it ; or else 
a dark triangle moving southward, 
high and swift, at Thanksgiving time. 
To a few, who know well the woods 
and fields about their homes, it may suggest a lonely 
little pond, with a dark bird rising swiftly, far out of 
reach, leaving the ripples playing among the sedges. 
To those accustomed to look sharply it will suggest 
five or six more birds, downy little fellows, hiding safe 
among roots and grasses, so still that one seldom 
suspects their presence. But the duck, like most 
game birds, loves solitude ; the details of his life he 
keeps very closely to himself ; and boys must be 
content with occasional glimpses. 

This is especially true of the dusky duck, more 
generally known by the name black duck among 
hunters. He is indeed a wild duck, so wild that 
one must study him with a gun, and study him long 
before he knows much about him. An ordinary 

55 



56 Ways of Wood Folk. 

tramp with a field-glass and eyes wide open may 
give a rare, distant view of him ; but only as one 
follows him as a sportsman winter after winter, meet- 
ing with much less of success than of discourage- 
ment, does he pick up many details of his personal 
life ; for wildness is born in him, and no experience 
with man is needed to develop it. On the lonely 
lakes in the midst of a Canada forest, where he meets 
man perhaps for the first time, he is the same as 
when he builds at the head of some mill pond within 
sight of a busy New England town. Other ducks 
may in time be tamed and used as decoys ; but not 
so he. Several times I have tried it with wing-tipped 
birds ; but the result was always the same. They 
worked night and day to escape, refusing all food 
and even water till they broke through their pen, or 
were dying of hunger, when I let them go. 

One spring a farmer, with whom I sometimes go 
shooting, determined to try with young birds. He 
found a black duck's nest in a dense swamp near a 
salt creek, and hatched the eggs with some others 
under a tame duck. Every time he approached the 
pen the little things skulked away and hid ; nor could 
they be induced to show themselves, although their 
tame companions were feeding and running about, 
quite contented. After two weeks, when he thought 
them somewhat accustomed to their surroundings, he 



A Wild Duck. 57 

let the whole brood go down to the shore just below 
his house. The moment they were free the wild 
birds scurried away into the water-grass out of sight, 
and no amount of anxious quacking on the part of 
the mother duck could bring them back into cap- 
tivity. He never saw them again. 

This habit which the young birds have of skulking 
away out of sight is a measure of protection that they 
constantly practise. A brood may be seen on almost 
any secluded pond or lake in New England, where 
the birds come in the early spring to build their 
nests. Watching from some hidden spot on the 
shore, one sees them diving and swimming about, 
hunting for food everywhere in the greatest freedom. 
The next moment they scatter and disappear so sud- 
denly that one almost rubs his eyes to make sure that 
the birds are really gone. If he is near enough, which 
is not likely unless he is very careful, he has heard a 
low cluck from the old bird, which now sits with neck 
standing straight up out of the water, so still as to be 
easily mistaken for one of the old stumps or bogs 
among which they are feeding. She is looking about 
to see if the ducklings are all well hidden. After a 
moment there is another cluck, very much like the 
other, and downy little fellows come bobbing out of 
the grass, or from close beside the stumps where you 
looked a moment before and saw nothing. This is 



58 Ways of Wood Folk. 

repeated at frequent intervals, the object being, appar- 
ently, to accustom the young birds to hide instantly 
when danger approaches. 

So watchful is the old bird, however, that trouble 
rarely threatens without her knowledge. When the 
young are well hidden at the first sign of the enemy, 
she takes wing and leaves them, returning when dan- 
ger is over to find them still crouching motionless in 
their hiding places. When surprised she acts like 
other game birds, — flutters along with a great splash- 
ing, trailing one wing as if wounded, till she has led 
you away from the young, or occupied your attention 
long enough for them to be safely hidden ; then she 
takes wing and leaves you. 

The habit of hiding becomes so fixed with the 
young birds that they trust to it long after the wings 
have grown and they are able to escape by flight. 
Sometimes in the early autumn I have run the bow of 
my canoe almost over a full-grown bird, lying hidden 
in a clump of grass, before he sprang into the air and 
away. A month later, in the same place, the canoe 
could hardly approach within a quarter of a mile 
without his taking alarm. 

Once they have learned to trust their wings, they 
give up hiding for swift flight. But they never forget 
their early training, and when wounded hide with a 
cunning that is remarkable. Unless one has a good 



A Wild Duck, 59 

dog it is almost useless to look for a wounded duck, 
if there is any cover to be reached. Hiding under a 
bank, crawling into a muskrat hole, worming a way 
under a bunch of dead grass or pile of leaves, swim- 
ming around and around a clump of bushes just out 
of sight of his pursuer, diving and coming up behind 
a tuft of grass, — these are some of the ways by which 
I have known a black duck try to escape. Twice 
I have heard from old hunters of their finding a bird 
clinging to a bunch of grass under water, though I 
have never seen it. Once, from a blind, I saw a black 
duck swim ashore and disappear into a small clump 
of berry bushes. Karl, who was with me, ran over 
to get him, but after a half-hour's search gave it up. 
Then I tried, and gave it up also. An hour later 
we saw the bird come out of the very place where 
we had been searching, and enter the water. Karl 
ran out, shouting, and the bird hid in the bushes 
again. Again we hunted the clump over and over, 
but no duck could be seen. We were turning away 
a second time when Karl cried : " Look ! " — and there, 
in plain sight, by the very white stone where I had 
seen him disappear, was the duck, or rather the red 
leg of a duck, sticking out of a tangle of black roots. 

With the first sharp frost that threatens to ice over 
the ponds in which they have passed the summer, the 
inland birds betake themselves to the seacoast, where 



60 Ways of Wood Folk. 

there is more or less migration all winter. The great 
body of ducks moves slowly southward as the winter 
grows severe ; but if food is plenty they winter all 
along the coast. It is then that they may be studied 
to the best advantage. 

During the daytime they are stowed away in quiet 
little ponds and hiding places, or resting in large 
flocks on the shoals well out of reach of land and dan- 
ger. When possible, they choose the former, because 
it gives them an abundance of fresh water, which is a 
daily necessity ; and because, unlike the coots which 
are often found in great numbers on the same shoals, 
they dislike tossing about on the waves for any length 
of time. But late in the autumn they desert the ponds 
and are seldom seen there again until spring, even 
though the ponds are open. They are very shy about 
being frozen in or getting ice on their feathers, and 
prefer to get their fresh water at the mouths of creeks 
and springs. 

With all their caution, — and they are very good 
weather prophets, knowing the times of tides and 
the approach of storms, as well as the days when 
fresh water freezes, — they sometimes get caught. 
Once I found a flock of five in great distress, frozen 
into the thin ice while sleeping, no doubt, with heads 
tucked under their wings. At another time I found 
a single bird floundering about with a big lump of 



A Wild Duck. 6 1 

ice and mud attached to his tail. He had probably 
found the insects plentiful in some bit of soft mud 
at low tide, and stayed there too long with the ther- 
mometer at zero. 

Night is their feeding time ; on the seacoast they fly 
in to the feeding grounds just at dusk. Fog bewil- 
ders them, and no bird likes to fly in rain, because 
it makes the feathers heavy ; so on foggy or rainy 
afternoons they come in early, or not at all. The 
favorite feeding ground is a salt marsh, with springs 
and creeks of brackish water. Seeds, roots, tender 
grasses, and snails and insects in the mud left by 
the low tide are their usual winter food. When 
these grow scarce they betake themselves to the mus- 
sel beds with the coots ; their flesh in consequence 
becomes strong and fishy. 

When the first birds come in to the feeding grounds 
before dark, they do it with the greatest caution, ex- 
amining not only the little pond or creek, but the 
whole neighborhood before lighting. The birds that 
follow trust to the inspection of these first comers, 
and generally fly straight in. For this reason it is 
well for one who attempts to see them at this time 
to have live decoys and, if possible, to have his blind 
built several days in advance, in order that the birds 
which may have been feeding in the place shall see 
no unusual object when they come in. If the blind 



62 Ways of Wood Folk, 

be newly built, only the stranger birds will fly straight 
in to his decoys. Those that have been there before 
will either turn away in alarm, or else examine the 
blind very cautiously on all sides. If you know now 
how to wait and sit perfectly still, the birds will at 
last fly directly over the stand to look in. That is 
your only chance ; and you must take it quickly if 
you expect to eat duck for dinner. 

By moonlight one may sit on the bank in plain 
sight of his decoys, and watch the wild birds as long 
as he will. It is necessary only to sit perfectly still. 
But this is unsatisfactory ; you can never see just 
what they are doing. Once I had thirty or forty close 
about me in this way. A sudden turn of my head, 
when a bat struck my cheek, sent them all off in a 
panic to the open ocean. 

A curious thing frequently noticed about these birds 
as they come in at night is their power to make their 
wings noisy or almost silent at will. Sometimes the 
rustle is so slight that, unless the air is perfectly still, 
it is scarcely audible ; at other times it is a strong 
wish-wish that can be heard two hundred yards away. 
The only theory I can suggest is that it is done 
as a kind of signal. In the daytime and on bright 
evenings one seldom hears it; on dark nights it is 
very frequent, and is always answered by the quack- 
ing of birds already on the feeding grounds, probably 



A Wild Duck. 63 

to guide the incomers. How they do it is uncertain ; 
it is probably in some such way as the night-hawk 
makes his curious booming sound, — not by means 
of his open mouth, as is generally supposed, but by 
slightly turning the wing quills so that the air sets 
them vibrating. One can test this, if he will, by 
blowing on any stiff feather. 

On stormy days the birds, instead of resting on the 
shoals, light near some lonely part of the beach and, 
after watching carefully for an hour or two, to be 
sure that no danger is near, swim ashore and collect 
in great bunches in some sheltered spot under a 
bank. It is indeed a tempting sight to see per- 
haps a hundred of the splendid birds gathered close 
together on the shore, the greater part with heads 
tucked under their wings, fast asleep ; but if you are 
to surprise them, you must turn snake and crawl, 
and learn patience. Scattered along the beach on 
either side are single birds or small bunches evi- 
dently acting as sentinels. The crows and gulls are 
flying continually along the tide line after food ; and 
invariably as they pass over one of these bunches of 
ducks they rise in the air to look around over all 
the bank. You must be well hidden to escape those 
bright eyes. The ducks understand crow and gull 
talk perfectly, and trust largely to these friendly sen- 
tinels. The gulls scream and the crows caw all day 



64 Ways of Wood Folk. 

long, and not a duck takes his head from under 
his wing ; but the instant either crow or gull utters 
his danger note every duck is in the air and headed 
straight off shore. 

The constant watchfulness of black ducks is per- 
haps the most remarkable thing about them. When 
feeding at night in some lonely marsh, or hidden away 
by day deep in the heart of the swamps, they never 
for a moment seem to lay aside their alertness, nor 
trust to their hiding places alone for protection. Even 
when lying fast asleep among the grasses with heads 
tucked under their wings, there is a nervous vigilance 
in their very attitudes which suggests a sense of dan- 
ger. Generally one has to content himself with study- 
ing them through a glass ; but once I had a very good 
opportunity of watching them close at hand, of out- 
witting them, as it were, at their own game of hide- 
and-seek. It was in a grassy little pond, shut in by 
high hills, on the open moors of Nantucket. The 
pond was in the middle of a plain, perhaps a hundred 
yards from the nearest hill. No tree or rock or bush 
offered any concealment to an enemy; the ducks 
could sleep there as sure of detecting the approach 
of danger as if on the open ocean. 

One autumn day I passed the place and, looking 
cautiously over the top of a hill, saw a single black 
duck swim out of the water-grass at the edge of the 



A Wild Duck. 65 

pond. The fresh breeze in my face induced me to 
try to creep down close to the edge of the pond, to 
see if it were possible to surprise birds there, should 
I find any on my next hunting trip. Just below me, 
at the foot of the hill, was a swampy run leading 
toward the pond, with grass nearly a foot high grow- 
ing along its edge. I must reach that if possible. 

After a few minutes of watching, the duck went 
into the grass again, and I started to creep down the 
hill, keeping my eyes intently on the pond. Halfway 
down, another duck appeared, and I dropped flat on 
the hillside in plain sight. Of course the duck noticed 
the unusual object. There was a commotion in the 
grass ; heads came up here and there. The next mo- 
ment, to my great astonishment, fully fifty black ducks 
were swimming about in the greatest uneasiness. 

I lay very still and watched. Five minutes passed; 
then quite suddenly all motion ceased in the pond ; 
every duck sat with neck standing straight up from 
the water, looking directly at me. So still were they 
that one could easily have mistaken them for stumps 
or peat bogs. After a few minutes of this kind of 
watching they seemed satisfied, and glided back, a 
few at a time, into the grass. 

When all were gone I rolled down the hill and 
gained the run, getting soaking wet as I splashed into 
it. Then it was easier to advance without being dis- 



66 Ways of Wood Folk. 

covered ; for whenever a duck came out to look round 
— which happened almost every minute at first — I 
could drop into the grass and be out of sight. 

In half an hour I had gained the edge of a low 
bank, well covered by coarse water-grass. Carefully 
pushing this aside, I looked through, and almost held 
my breath, they were so near. Just below me, within 
six feet, was a big drake, with head drawn down so 
close to his body that I wondered what he had done 
with his neck. His eyes were closed ; he was fast 
asleep. In front of him were eight or ten more ducks 
close together, all with heads under their wings. Scat- 
tered about in the grass everywhere were small groups, 
sleeping, or pluming their glossy dark feathers. 

Beside the pleasure of watching them, the first black 
ducks that I had ever seen unconscious, there was the 
satisfaction of thinking how completely they had been 
outwitted at their own game of sharp watching. How 
they would have jumped had they only known what 
was lying there in the grass so near their hiding place ! 
At first, every time I saw r a pair of little black eyes 
wink, or a head come from under a wing, I felt myself 
shrinking close together in the thought that I was 
discovered ; but that wore off after a time, when I 
found that the eyes winked rather sleepily, and the 
necks were taken out just to stretch them, much as 
one would take a comfortable yawn. 



A Wild Duck. 



6 7 



Once I was caught squarely, but the grass and 
my being so near saved me. I had raised my head 
and lay with chin in my hands, deeply interested in 
watching a young duck making a most elaborate 
toilet, when from the other side an old bird shot 





*:.l _,:'._■ Z^-..^ 



suddenly into the open water and saw me as I dropped 
out of sight. There was a low, sharp quack which 
brought every duck out of his hiding, wide awake on 
the instant. At first they all bunched together at the 
farther side, looking straight at the bank where I 
lay. Probably they saw my feet, which w r ere outside 
the covert as I lay full length. Then they drew 
gradually nearer till they were again within the fringe 



68 Ways of Wood Folk. 

of water-grass. Some of them sat quite up on their 
tails by a vigorous use of their wings, and stretched 
their necks to look over the low bank. Just keeping 
still saved me. In five minutes they were quiet again ; 
even the young duck seemed to have forgotten her 
vanity and gone to sleep with the others. 

Two or three hours I lay thus and watched them 
through the grass, spying very rudely, no doubt, into 
the seclusion of their home life. As the long shadow 
of the western hill stretched across the pool till it 
darkened the eastern bank, the ducks awoke one by 
one from their nap, and began to stir about in prepa- 
ration for departure. Soon they were collected at the 
center of the open water, where they sat for a moment 
very still, heads up, and ready. If there was any sig- 
nal given I did not hear it. At the same moment 
each pair of wings struck the water with a sharp 
splash, and they shot straight up in that remarkable 
way of theirs, as if thrown by a strong spring. An 
instant they seemed to hang motionless in the air 
high above the water, then they turned and disap- 
peared swiftly over the eastern hill toward the 
marshes. 




V. AN ORIOLE'S NEST. 

OW suggestive it is, swinging there 

through sunlight and shadow from the 

long drooping tips of the old elm 

boughs ! And what a delightful cradle 

for the young orioles, swayed all day 

long by every breath of the summer breeze, 

peeping through chinks as the world sweeps 

by, watching with bright eyes the boy below 

who looks up in vain, or the mountain of hay that 

brushes them in passing, and whistling cheerily, blow 

high or low, with never a fear of falling ! The mother 

bird must feel very comfortable about it as she goes 

off caterpillar hunting, for no bird enemy can trouble 

the little ones while she is gone. The black snake, 

that horror of all low-nesting birds, will never climb 

so high. The red squirrel — little wretch that he is, 

to eat young birds when he has still a bushel of corn 

and nuts in his old wall — cannot find a footing on 

those delicate branches. Neither can the crow find 

a resting place from which to steal the young ; and 

the hawk's legs are not long enough to reach down 

6 9 



7<D Ways of Wood Folk. 

and grasp them, should he perchance venture near 
the house and hover an instant over the nest. 

Besides all this, the oriole is a neighborly little 
body; and that helps her. Though the young are 
kept from harm anywhere by the cunning instinct 
which builds a hanging nest, she still prefers to build 
near the house, where hawks and crows and owls 
rarely come. She knows her friends and takes advan- 
tage of their protection, returning year after year 
to the same old elm, and, like a thrifty little house- 
wife, carefully saving and sorting the good threads of 
her storm-wrecked old house to be used in building 
the new. 

Of late years, however, it has seemed to me that 
the pretty nests on the secluded streets of New Eng- 
land towns are growing scarcer. The orioles are 
peace-loving birds, and dislike the society of those 
noisy, pugnacious little rascals, the English sparrows, 
which have of late taken possession of our streets. 
Often now I find the nests far away from any house, 
on lonely roads where a few years ago they were 
rarely seen. Sometimes also a solitary farmhouse, 
too far from the town to be much visited by spar- 
rows, has two or three nests swinging about it in 
its old elms, where formerly there was but one. 

It is an interesting evidence of the bird's keen 
instinct that where nests are built on lonely roads 



An Oriole s Nest. yi 

and away from houses they are noticeably deeper, and 
so better protected from bird enemies. The same 
thing is sometimes noticed of nests built in maple or 
apple trees, which are without the protection of droop- 
ing branches, upon which birds of prey can find no 
footing. Some wise birds secure the same protection 
by simply contracting the neck of the nest, instead of 
building a deep one. Young birds building their first 
nests seem afraid to trust in the strength of their own 
weaving. Their nests are invariably shallow, and so 
suffer most from birds of prey. 

In the choice of building material the birds are 
very careful. They know well that no branch sup- 
ports the nest from beneath ; that the safety of the 
young orioles depends on good, strong material well 
woven together. In some wise way they seem to 
know at a glance whether a thread is strong enough 
to be trusted ; but sometimes, in selecting the first 
threads that are to bear the whole weight of the nest, 
they are unwilling to trust to appearances. At such 
times a pair of birds may be seen holding a little tug- 
of-war, with feet braced, shaking and pulling the 
thread like a pair of terriers, till it is well tested. 

It is in gathering and testing the materials for a 
nest that the orioles display no little ingenuity. One 
day, a few years ago, I was lying under some shrubs, 
watching a pair of the birds that were building close 



72 Ways of Wood Folk. 

to the house. It was a typical nest-making day, the 
sun pouring his bright rays through delicate green 
leaves and a glory of white apple blossoms, the air 
filled with warmth and fragrance, birds and bees busy 
everywhere. Orioles seem always happy ; to-day they 
quite overflowed in the midst of all the brightness, 
though materials were scarce and they must needs be 
diligent. 

The female was very industrious, never returning 
to the nest without some contribution, while the male 
frolicked about the trees in his brilliant orange and 
black, whistling his warm rich notes, and seeming 
like a dash of southern sunshine amidst the blossoms. 
Sometimes he stopped in his frolic to find a bit of 
string, over which he raised an impromptu jubilate, 
or to fly with his mate to the nest, uttering that soft 
rich twitter of his in a mixture of blarney and con- 
gratulation whenever she found some particularly 
choice material. But his chief part seemed to be to 
furnish the celebration, while she took care of the. 
nest-making. 

Out in front of me, under the lee of the old wall 
whither some line-stripping gale had blown it, was 
a torn fragment of cloth with loose threads showing 
everywhere. I was wondering why the birds did not 
utilize it, when the male, in one of his lively flights, 
discovered it and flew down. First he hopped all 



An Oriole s Nest. 73 

around it ; next he tried some threads ; but, as the 
cloth was lying loose on the grass, the whole piece 
came whenever he pulled. For a few moments he 
worked diligently, trying a pull on each side in suc- 
cession. Once he tumbled end over end in a comical 
scramble, as the fragment caught on a grass stub but 
gave way when he had braced himself and was pulling 
hardest. Quite abruptly he flew 7 off, and I thought 
he had given up the attempt. 

In a minute he was back with his mate, thinking, 
no doubt, that she, as a capable little manager, would 
know all about such things. If birds do not talk, they 
have at least some very ingenious w r ays of letting one 
another know what they think, which amounts to the 
same thing. 

The two worked together for some minutes, getting 
an occasional thread, but not enough to pay for the 
labor. The trouble w T as that both pulled together on 
the same side ; and so they merely dragged the bit 
of cloth all over the lawn, instead of pulling out the 
threads they w r anted. Once they unraveled a long 
thread by pulling at right angles, but the next 
moment they were together on the same side again. 
The male seemed to do, not as he was told, but 
exactly what he saw his mate do. Whenever she 
pulled at a thread, he hopped around, as close to 
her as he could get, and pulled too. 



74 



Ways of Wood Folk. 



Twice they had given up the attempt, only to return 
after hunting diligently elsewhere. Good material was 




scarce that season. I was wondering how long their 
patience would last, when the female suddenly seized 
the cloth by a corner and flew along close to the 



An Oriole s Nest. 75 

ground, dragging it after her, chirping loudly the 
while. She disappeared into a crab-apple tree in a 
corner of the garden, whither the male followed her 
a moment later. 

Curious as to what they were doing, yet fearing to 
disturb them, I waited where I w r as till I saw both 
birds fly to the nest, each with some long threads. 
This was repeated ; and then curiosity got the better 
of consideration. While the orioles were weaving the 
last threads into their nest, I ran round the house, 
crept a long way behind the old wall, and so to a safe 
hiding place near the crab-apple. 

The orioles had solved their problem; the bit of 
cloth was fastened there securely among the thorns. 
Soon the birds came back and, seizing some threads 
by the ends, raveled them out without difficulty. It 
was the work of but a moment to gather as much 
material as they could use at one w r eaving. For an 
hour or more I watched them working industriously 
between the crab-apple and the old elm, where the 
nest was growing rapidly to a beautiful depth. Sev- 
eral times the bit of cloth slipped from the thorns as 
the birds pulled upon it ; but as often as it did they 
carried it back and fastened it more securely, till at 
last it grew so snarled that they could get no more 
long threads, when they left it for good. 

That same day I carried out some bright-colored 



76 Ways of Wood Folk. 

bits of worsted and ribbon, and scattered them on 
the grass. The birds soon found them and used 
them in completing their nest. For a while a gayer 
little dwelling was never seen in a tree. The bright 
bits of color in the soft gray of the walls gave the 
nest always a holiday appearance, in good keeping 
with the high spirits of the orioles. But by the time 
the young had chipped the shell, and the joyousness 
of nest-building had given place to the constant duties 
of filling hungry little mouths, the rains and the 
sun of summer had bleached the bright colors to a 
uniform sober gray. 

That was a happy family from beginning to end. 
No accident ever befell it ; no enemy disturbed its 
peace. And when the young birds had flown away 
to the South, I took down the nest which I had helped 
to build, and hung it in my study as a souvenir of 
my bright little neighbors. 




VI. THE BUILDERS. 

CURIOUS bit of wild life came to me 
at dusk one day in the wilderness. It 
was midwinter, and the snow lay deep. 
I was sitting alone on a fallen 
tree, waiting for the moon to rise 
so that I could follow the faint 
snowshoe track across a barren, 
three miles, then through a mile 
of forest to another trail that led 
to camp. I had followed a caribou too far that day, 
and this was the result — feeling along my own track 
by moonlight, with the thermometer sinking rapidly 
to the twenty-below-zero point. 

There is scarcely any twilight in the woods ; in ten 
minutes it would be quite dark ; and I was wishing 
that I had blankets and an axe, so that I could camp 
where I was, when a big gray shadow came stealing 
towards me through the trees. It was a Canada lynx. 
My fingers gripped the rifle hard, and the right mitten 
seemed to slip off of itself as I caught the glare of his 
fierce yellow eyes. 

77 



78 Ways of Wood Folk. 

But the eyes were not looking at me at all. In- 
deed, he had not noticed me. He was stealing along, 
crouched low in the snow, his ears back, his stub tail 
twitching nervously, his whole attention fixed tensely 
on something beyond me out on the barren. I wanted 
his beautiful skin ; but I wanted more to find out what 
he was after ; so I kept still and watched. 

At the edge of the barren he crouched under a dwarf 
spruce, settled himself deeper in the snow by a wriggle 
or two till his feet were well under him and his balance 
perfect, and the red fire blazed in his eyes and his big 
muscles quivered. Then he hurled himself forward 
— one, two, a dozen mighty bounds through flying 
snow, and he landed with a screech on the dome of 
a beaver house. There he jumped about, shaking an 
imaginary beaver like a fury, and gave another screech 
that made one's spine tingle. That over, he stood very 
still, looking off over the beaver roofs that dotted the 
shore of a little pond there. The blaze died out of 
his eyes ; a different look crept into them. He put 
his nose down to a tiny hole in the mound, the beavers' 
ventilator, and took a long sniff, while his whole body 
seemed to distend with the warm rich odor that poured 
up into his hungry nostrils. Then he rolled his head 
sadly, and went away. 

Now all that was pure acting. A lynx likes beaver 
meat better than anything else ; and this fellow had 



The Builders, 79 

caught some of the colony, no doubt, in the well-fed 
autumn days, as they worked on their dam and houses. 
Sharp hunger made him remember them as he came 
through the wood on his nightly hunt after hares. 
He knew well that the beavers were safe ; that 
months of intense cold had made their two-foot mud 
walls like granite. But he came, nevertheless, just 
to pretend he had caught one, and to remember how 
good his last full meal smelled when he ate it in 
October. 

It was all so boylike, so unexpected there in the 
heart of the wilderness, that I quite forgot that I 
wanted the lynx's skin. I was hungry too, and w r ent 
out for a sniff at the ventilator ; and it smelled good. 
I remembered the time once when I had eaten beaver, 
and was glad to get it. I walked about among the 
houses. On every dome there were lynx tracks, old 
and new, and the prints of a blunt nose in the snow. 
Evidently he came often to dine on the smell of good 
dinners. I looked the way he had gone, and began 
to be sorry for him. But there were the beavers, safe 
and warm and fearless within two feet of me, listening 
undoubtedly to the strange steps without. And that 
was good ; for they are the most interesting creatures 
in all the wilderness. 

Most of us know the beaver chiefly in a simile. 
" Working like a beaver," or " busy as a beaver," is 



80 Ways of Wood Folk. 

one of those proverbial expressions that people accept 
without comment or curiosity. It is about one-third 
true, which is a generous proportion of truth for a 
proverb. In winter, for five long months at least, he 
does nothing but sleep and eat and keep warm. " Lazy 
as a beaver " is then a good figure. And summer time 
— ah! that's just one long holiday, and the beavers 
are jolly as grigs, with never a thought of work from 
morning till night. When the snow is gone, and the 
streams are clear, and the twitter of bird songs meets 
the beaver's ear as he rises from the dark passage 
under water that leads to his house, then he forgets 
all settled habits and joins in the general heyday of 
nature. The well built house that sheltered him from 
storm and cold, and defied even the wolverine to dig 
its owner out, is deserted for any otter's den or chance 
hole in the bank where he may sleep away the sun- 
light in peace. The great dam, upon which he toiled 
so many nights, is left to the mercy of the freshet or 
the canoeman's axe ; and no plash of falling water 
through a break — that sound which in autumn or 
winter brings the beaver like a flash — will trouble 
his wise little head for a moment. 

All the long summer he belongs to the tribe of 
Ishmael, wandering through lakes and streams wher- 
ever fancy leads him. It is as if he were bound to 
see the world after being cooped up in his narrow 



The Builders. 8 1 

quarters all winter. Even the strong family ties, 
one of the most characteristic and interesting things 
in beaver life, are for the time loosened. Every 
family group when it breaks up housekeeping in the 
spring represents five generations. First, there are 
the two old beavers, heads of the family and absolute 
rulers, who first engineered the big dam and houses, 
and have directed repairs for nobody knows how long. 
Next in importance are the baby beavers, no bigger 
than musquashes, with fur like silk velvet, and eyes 
always wide open at the wonders of the first season 
out; then the one- and two-year-olds, frisky as boys 
let loose from school, always in mischief and having 
to be looked after, and occasionally nipped ; then 
the three-year-olds, who presently leave the group 
and go their separate happy ways in search of mates. 
So the long days go by in a kind of careless summer 
excursion ; and when one sometimes finds their camp- 
ing ground in his own summer roving through the 
wilderness, he looks upon it with curious sympathy. 
Fellow campers are they, pitching their tents by 
sunny lakes and alder-fringed, trout-haunted brooks, 
always close to Nature's heart, and loving the wild, 
free life much as he does himself. 

But when the days grow short and chill, and the 
twitter of warblers gives place to the honk of passing 
geese, and wild ducks gather in the lakes, then the 



82 Ways of Wood Folk. 

heart of the beaver goes back to his home ; and pres- 
ently he follows his heart. September finds them 
gathered about the old dam again, the older heads 
filled with plans of repair and new houses and winter 
food and many other things. The grown-up males 
have brought their mates back to the old home ; the 
females have found their places in other family groups. 
It is then that the beaver begins to be busy. 

His first concern is for a stout dam across the 
stream that will give him a good-sized pond and 
plenty of deep water. To understand this, one must 
remember that the beaver intends to shut himself in 
a kind of prison all winter. He knows well that he 
is not safe on land a moment after the snow falls ; 
that some prowling lucivee or wolverine would find 
his tracks and follow him, and that his escape to 
water would be cut off by thick ice. So he plans a 
big claw-proof house with no entrance save a tunnel 
in the middle, which leads through the bank to the 
bottom of his artificial pond. Once this is frozen 
over, he cannot get out till the spring sun sets him 
free. But he likes a big pond, that he may exercise 
a bit under water when he comes down for his dinner; 
and a deep pond, that he may feel sure the hardest 
winter will never freeze down to his doorway and shut 
him in. Still more important, the beaver's food is 
stored on the bottom ; and it would never do to trust 



The Builders. 83 

it to shallow water, else some severe winter it would 
get frozen into the ice, and the beavers starve in 
their prison. Ten to fifteen feet usually satisfies their 
instinct for safety ; but to get that depth of water, 
especially on shallow streams, requires a huge dam 
and an enormous amount of work, to say nothing 
of planning. 

Beaver dams are solid structures always, built up 
of logs, brush, stones, and driftwood, well knit together 
by alder poles. One summer, in canoeing a wild, 
unknown stream, I met fourteen dams within a space 
of five miles. Through two of these my Indian and 
I broke a passage with our axes ; the others were so 
solid that it was easier to unload our canoe and make 
a portage than to break through. Dams are found 
close together like that when a beaver colony has 
occupied a stream for years unmolested. The food- 
wood above the first dam being cut off, they move 
down stream ; for the beaver always cuts on the 
banks above his dam, and lets the current work for 
him in transportation. Sometimes, when the banks 
are such that a pond cannot be made, three or four 
dams will be built close together, the back-water of 
one reaching up to the one above, like a series of 
locks on a canal. This is to keep the colony together, 
and yet give room for play and storage. 

There is the greatest difference of opinion as to the 



84 Ways of Wood Folk. 

intelligence displayed by the beavers in choosing a 
site for their dam, one observer claiming skill, inge- 
nuity, even reason for the beavers ; another claiming 
a mere instinctive haphazard piling together of mate- 
rials anywhere in the stream. I have seen perhaps a 
hundred different dams in the wilderness, nearly all 
of which were well placed. Occasionally I have found 
one that looked like a stupid piece of work — two or 
three hundred feet of alder brush and gravel across 
the widest part of a stream, when, by building just 
above or below, a dam one-fourth the length might 
have given them better water. This must be said, 
however, for the builders, that perhaps they found a 
better soil for digging their tunnels, or a more con- 
venient spot for their houses near their own dam ; or 
that they knew what they wanted better than their 
critic did. I think undoubtedly the young beavers 
often make mistakes, but I think also, from studying 
a good many dams, that they profit by disaster, and 
build better; and that on the whole their mistakes 
are not proportionally greater than those of human 
builders. 

Sometimes a dam proves a very white elephant on 
their hands. The site is not well chosen, or the 
stream difficult, and the restrained water pours round 
the ends of their dam, cutting them away. They build 
the dam longer at once ; but again the water pours 



The Builders. 85 

round on its work of destruction. So they keep on 
building, an interminable structure, till the frosts come, 
and they must cut their wood and tumble their houses 
together in a desperate hurry to be ready when the ice 
closes over them. 

But on alder streams, where the current is sluggish 
and the soil soft, one sometimes finds a wonderfully 
ingenious device for remedying the above difficulty. 
When the dam is built, and the water deep enough 
for safety, the beavers dig a canal around one end of 
the dam to carry off the surplus water. I know of 
nothing in all the woods and fields that brings one 
closer in thought and sympathy to the little wild folk 
than to come across one of these canals, the water 
pouring safely through it past the beaver's handiwork, 
the dam stretching straight and solid across the stream, 
and the domed houses rising beyond. 

Once I found where the beavers had utilized man's 
work. A huge log dam had been built on a wilder- 
ness stream to secure a head of water for driving logs 
from the lumber woods. When the pines and four- 
teen-inch spruce were all gone, the works were aban- 
doned, and the dam left — with the gates open, of 
course. A pair of young beavers, prospecting for a 
winter home, found the place and were suited exactly. 
They rolled a sunken log across the gates for a foun- 
dation, filled them up with alder bushes and stones, 



86 Ways of Wood Folk. 

and the work was done. When I found the place 
they had a pond a mile wide to play in. Their house 
was in a beautiful spot, under a big hemlock ; and 
their doorway slanted off into twenty feet of water. 
That site was certainly well chosen. 

Another dam that I found one winter when caribou- 
hunting was wonderfully well placed. No engineer 
could have chosen better. It was made by the same 
colony the lynx was after, and just below where he 
went through his pantomime for my benefit ; his 
tracks were there too. The barrens of which I spoke 
are treeless plains in the northern forest, the beds of 
ancient shallow lakes. The beavers found one with 
a stream running through it ; followed the stream 
down to the foot of the barren, where two wooded 
points came out from either side and almost met. 
Here was formerly the outlet ; and here the beavers 
built their dam, and so made the old lake over again. 
It must be a wonderfully fine place in summer — two 
or three thousand acres of playground, full of cran- 
berries and luscious roots. In winter it is too shallow 
to be of much use, save for a few acres about the 
beavers' doorways. 

There are three ways of dam-building in general 
use among the beavers. The first is for use on slug- 
gish, alder-fringed streams, where they can build up 
from the bottom. Two or three sunken logs form 



The Builders, 87 

the foundation, which is from three to five feet broad. 
Sticks, driftwood, and stout poles, which the beavers 
cut on the banks, are piled on this and weighted with 
stones and mud. The stones are rolled in from the 
bank or moved considerable distances under water. 
The mud is carried in the beaver's paws, which he 
holds up against his chin so as to carry a big handful 
without spilling. Beavers love such streams, with 
their alder shade and sweet grasses and fringe of 
wild meadow, better than all other places. And, by 
the way, most of the natural meadows and half the 
ponds of New England were made by beavers. If 
you go to the foot of any little meadow in the woods 
and dig at the lower end, where the stream goes out, 
you will find, sometimes ten feet under the surface, 
the remains of the first dam that formed the meadow 
when the water flowed back and killed the trees. 

The second kind of dam is for sw T ift streams. Stout, 
ten-foot brush is the chief material. The brush is 
floated down to the spot selected ; the tops are 
weighted down with stones, and the butts left free, 
pointing down stream. Such dams must be built out 
from the sides, of course. They are generally arched, 
the convex side being up stream so as to make a 
stronger structure. When the arch closes in the mid- 
dle, the lower side of the dam is banked heavily with 
earth and stones. That is shrewd policy on the bea- 



88 Ways of Wood Folk. 

ver's part ; for once the arch is closed by brush, the 
current can no longer sweep away the earth and 
stones used for the embankment. 

The third kind is the strongest and easiest to build. 
It is for places where big trees lean out over the 
stream. Three or four beavers gather about a tree 
and begin to cut, sitting up on their broad tails. One 
stands above them on the bank, apparently directing 
the work. In a short time the tree is nearly cut 
through from the under side. Then the beaver above 
begins to cut down carefully. With the first warning 
crack he jumps aside, and the tree falls straight across 
where it is wanted. All the beavers then disappear 
and beQ*in cutting the branches that rest on the bot- 
torn. Slowly the tree settles till its trunk is at the 
right height to make the top of the dam. The upper 
branches are then trimmed close to the trunk, and 
are woven w 7 ith alders among the long stubs sticking 
down from the trunk into the river bed. Stones, mud, 
and brush are used liberally to fill the chinks, and in 
a remarkably short time the dam is complete. 

When you meet such a dam on the stream you are 
canoeing don't attempt to break through. You will find 
it shorter by several hours to unload and make a carry. 

All the beaver's cutting is done by chisel-edged 
front teeth. There are two of these in each jaw, 
extending a good inch and a half outside the gums, 



The Builders. 89 

and meeting at a sharp bevel. The inner sides of the 
teeth are softer and wear away faster than the outer, 
so that the bevel remains the same ; and the action of 
the upper and lower teeth over each other keeps them 
always sharp. They grow so rapidly that a beaver 
must be constantly wood cutting to keep them worn 
down to comfortable size. 

Often on wild streams you find a stick floating 
down to meet you showing a fresh cut. You grab it, 
of course, and say : " Somebody is camped above here. 
That stick has just been cut with a sharp knife." But 
look closer ; see that faint ridge the whole length of 
the cut, as if the knife had a tiny gap in its edge. 
That is where the beaver's two upper teeth meet, and 
the edge is not quite perfect. He cut that stick, 
thicker than a man's thumb, at a single bite. To 
cut an alder having the diameter of a teacup is the 
work of a minute for the same tools; and a towering 
birch tree falls in a remarkably short time when 
attacked by three or four beavers. Around the stump 
of such a tree you find a pile of two-inch chips, thick, 
white, clean cut, and arched to the curve of the bea- 
ver's teeth. Judge the workman by his chips, and 
this is a good workman. 

When the dam is built the beaver cuts his winter 
food-wood. A colony of the creatures will often fell 
a whole grove of young birch or poplar on the bank 



go Ways of Wood Folk. 

above the dam. The branches with the best bark are 
then cut into short lengths, which are rolled down the 
bank and floated to the pool at the dam. 

Considerable discussion has taken place as to how 
the beaver sinks his wood — for of course he must 
sink it, else it would freeze into the ice and be use- 
less. One theory is that the beavers suck the air 
from each stick. Two witnesses declare to me they 
have seen them doing it; and in a natural history 
book of my childhood there is a picture of a beaver 
with the end of a three-foot stick in his mouth, suck- 
ing the air out. Just as if the beavers did n't know 
better, even if the absurd thing were possible ! The 
simplest way is to cut the wood early and leave it in 
the water a while, when it sinks of itself ; for green 
birch and poplar are almost as heavy as water. They 
soon get waterlogged and go to the bottom. It is 
almost impossible for lumbermen to drive spool wood 
(birch) for this reason. If the nights grow suddenly 
cold before the wood sinks, the beavers take it down 
to the bottom and press it slightly into the mud ; 
or else they push sticks under those that float against 
the dam, and more under these ; and so on till the 
stream is full to the bottom, the weight of those above 
keeping the others down. Much of the wood is lost 
in this way by being frozen into the ice ; but the 
beaver knows that, and cuts plenty. 



The Builders. 91 

When a beaver is hungry in winter he comes down 
under the ice, selects a stick, carries it up into his 
house, and eats the bark. Then he carries the peeled 
stick back under the ice and puts it aside out of the 
way. 

Once, in winter, it occurred to me that soaking 
spoiled the flavor of bark, and that the beavers might 
like a fresh bite. So I cut a hole in the ice on the 
pool above their dam. Of course the chopping scared 
the beavers ; it was vain to experiment that day. 
I spread a blanket and some thick boughs over the 
hole to keep it from freezing over too thickly, and 
went away. 

Next day I pushed the end of a freshly cut birch 
pole down among the beavers' store, lay down with 
my face to the hole after carefully cutting out the 
thin ice, drew a big blanket round my head and the 
projecting end of the pole to shut out the light, and 
watched. For a while it was all dark as a pocket ; 
then I began to see things dimly. Presently a darker 
shadow shot along the bottom and grabbed the pole. 
It was a beaver, with a twenty dollar coat on. He 
tugged; I held on tight — which surprised him so 
that he went back into his house to catch breath. 

But the taste of fresh bark was in his mouth, and 
soon he was back with another beaver. Both took 
hold this time and pulled together. No use ! They 



92 Ways of Wood Folk. 

began to swim round, examining the queer pole on 
every side. " What kind of a stick are you, anyway? " 
one was thinking. " You did n't grow here, because 
I would have found you long ago." " And you 're 
not frozen into the ice," said the other, " because you 
wriggle." Then they both took hold again, and I 
began to haul up carefully. I wanted to see them 
nearer. That surprised them immensely ; but I think 
they would have held on only for an accident. The 
blanket slipped away ; a stream of light shot in ; 
there were two great whirls in the water; and that 
was the end of the experiment. They did not come 
back, though I waited till I was almost frozen. But 
I cut some fresh birch and pushed it under the ice 
to pay for my share in the entertainment. 

The beaver's house is generally the last thing 
attended to. He likes to build this when the nights 
grow cold enough to freeze his mortar soon after it 
is laid. Two or three tunnels are dug from the 
bottom of the beaver pond up through the bank, 
coming to the surface together at the point where 
the center of the house is to be. Around this he 
lays solid foundations of log and stone in a circle 
from six to fifteen feet in diameter, according to the 
number of beavers to occupy the house. On these 
foundations he rears a thick mass of sticks and grass, 
which are held together by plenty of mud. The top 



The Builders. 93 

is roofed by stout sticks arranged as in an Indian 
wigwam, and the whole domed over with grass, 
stones, sticks, and mud. Once this is solidly frozen, 
the beaver sleeps in peace ; his house is burglar 
proof. 

If on a lake shore, where the rise of water is never 
great, the beaver's house is four or five feet high. On 
streams subject to freshets they may be two or three 
times that height. As in the case of the musquash 
(or muskrat), a strange instinct guides the beaver as 
to the height of his dwelling. He builds high or low, 
according to his expectations of high or low water ; 
and he is rarely drowned out of his dry nest. 

Sometimes two or three families unite to build a 
single large house, but always in such cases each 
family has its separate apartment. When a house 
is dug open it is evident from the different impres- 
sions that each member of the family has his own 
bed, which he always occupies. Beavers are exem- 
plary in their neatness ; the house after five months' 
use is as neat as when first made. 

All their building is primarily a matter of instinct, 
for a tame beaver builds miniature dams and houses 
on the floor of his cage. Still it is not an uncon- 
trollable instinct like that of most birds ; nor blind, 
like that of rats and squirrels at times. I have found 
beaver houses on lake shores where no dam was 



94 



Ways of Wood Folk. 



built, simply because the water was deep enough, 
and none was needed. In vacation time the young 
beavers build for fun, just as boys build a dam wher- 
ever they can find running water. I am persuaded 
also (and this may explain some of the dams that 




seem stupidly placed) that at times the old beavers 
set the young to work in summer, in order that they 
may know how to build when it becomes necessary. 
This is a hard theory to prove, for the beavers work 
by night, preferably on dark, rainy nights, when they 
are safest on land to gather materials. But while 
building is instinctive, skilful building is the result 



The Builders. 95 

of practice and experience. And some of the beaver 
dams show wonderful skill. 

There is one beaver that never builds, that never 
troubles himself about house, or dam, or winter's 
store. I am not sure whether we ought to call him 
the genius or the lazy man of the family. The bank 
beaver is a solitary old bachelor living in a den, like 
a mink, in the bank of a stream. He does not build 
a house, because a den under a cedar's roots is as safe 
and warm. He never builds a dam, because there are 
deep places in the river where the current is too swift 
to freeze. He finds tender twigs much juicier, even 
in winter, than stale bark stored under water. As 
for his telltale tracks in the snow, his wits must 
guard him against enemies; and there is the open 
stretch of river to flee to. 

There are two theories among Indians and trappers 
to account for the bank beaver's eccentricities. The 
first is that he has failed to find a mate and leaves 
the colony, or is driven out, to lead a lonely bachelor 
life. His conduct during the mating season certainly 
favors this theory, for never was anybody more dili- 
gent in his search for a wife than he. Up and down 
the streams and alder brooks of a whole wild country- 
side he wanders without rest, stopping here and there 
on a grassy point to gather a little handful of mud, 
like a child's mud pie, all patted smooth, in the midst 



g6 Ways of Wood Folk. 

of which is a little strong smelling musk. When 
you find that sign, in a circle of carefully trimmed 
grass under the alders, you know that there is a 
young beaver on that stream looking for a wife. 
And when the young beaver finds his pie opened 
and closed again, he knows that there is a mate there 
somewhere waiting for him. But the poor bank 
beaver never finds his mate, and the next winter 
must go back to his solitary den. He is much more 
easily caught than other beavers, and the trappers 
say it is because he is lonely and tired of life. 

The second theory is that generally held by Indians. 
They say the bank beaver is lazy and refuses to work 
with the others ; so they drive him out. When 
beavers are busy they are very busy, and tolerate no 
loafing. Perhaps he even tries to persuade them 
that all their work is unnecessary, and so shares 
the fate of reformers in general. 

While examining the den of a bank beaver last 
summer another theory suggested itself. Is not this 
one of the rare animals in which all the instincts of 
his kind are lacking ? He does not build because 
he has no impulse to build ; he does not know how. 
So he represents what the beaver was, thousands of 
years ago, before he learned how to construct his 
dam and house, reappearing now by some strange 
freak of heredity, and finding himself wofully out of 



The Builders. gj 

place and time. The other beavers drive him away 
because all gregarious animals and birds have a 
strong fear and dislike of any irregularity in their 
kind. Even when the peculiarity is slight — a wound, 
or a deformity — they drive the poor victim from their 
midst remorselessly. It is a cruel instinct, but part 
of one of the oldest in creation, the instinct which 
preserves the species. This explains why the bank 
beaver never finds a mate ; none of the beavers will 
have anything to do with him. 

This occasional lack of instinct is not peculiar to 
the beavers. Now and then a bird is hatched here 
in the North that has no impulse to migrate. He 
cries after his departing comrades, but never follows. 
So he remains and is lost in the storms of winter. 

There are few creatures in the wilderness more 
difficult to observe than the beavers, both on account 
of their extreme shyness and because they work only 
by night. The best way to get a glimpse of them at 
work is to make a break in their dam and pull the 
top from one of their houses some autumn afternoon, 
at the time of full moon. Just before twilight you 
must steal back and hide some distance from the 
dam. Even then the chances are against you, for 
the beavers are suspicious, keen of ear and nose, and 
generally refuse to show themselves till after the 
moon sets or you have gone away. You may have 



gS Ways of Wood Folk. 

to break their dam half a dozen times, and freeze as 
often, before you see it repaired. 

It is a most interesting sight when it comes at last, 
and well repays the watching. The water is pouring 
through a five-foot break in the dam ; the roof of a 
house is in ruins. You have rubbed yourself all over 
with fir boughs, to destroy some of the scent in your 
clothes, and hidden yourself in the top of a fallen 
tree. The twilight goes ; the moon wheels over the 
eastern spruces, flooding the river with silver light. 
Still no sign of life. You are beginning to think of 
another disappointment; to think your toes cannot 
stand the cold another minute without stamping, 
which would spoil everything, when a ripple shoots 
swiftly across the pool, and a big beaver comes out 
on the bank. He sits up a moment, looking, listen- 
ing ; then goes to the broken house and sits up again, 
looking it all over, estimating damages, making plans. 
There is a commotion in the water ; three others 
join him — you are warm now. 

Meanwhile three or four more are swimming about 
the dam, surveying the damage there. One dives to 
the bottom, but comes up in a moment to report all 
safe below. Another is tugging at a thick pole just 
below you. Slowly he tows it out in front, balances 
a moment and lets it go — good! — squarely across 
the break. Two others are cutting alders above ; 



The Builders. 



99 



and here come the bushes floating down. Over at 
the damaged house two beavers are up on the walls, 
raising the rafters into place ; a third appears to be 
laying on the outer covering and plastering it with 
mud. Now and then one sits up straight like a 
rabbit, listens, stretches his back to get the kinks 
out, then drops to his work again. 

It is brighter now ; moon and stars are glimmering 
in the pool. At the dam the sound of falling water 
grows faint as the break is rapidly closed. The 
houses loom larger. Over the dome of the one 
broken, the dark outline of a beaver passes trium- 
phantly. Quick work that. You grow more inter- 
ested ; you stretch your neck to see — splash ! A 
beaver gliding past has seen you. As he dives he 
gives the water a sharp blow with his broad tail, the 
danger signal of the beavers, and a startling one in 
the dead stillness. There is a sound as of a stick 
being plunged end first into the water ; a few eddies 
go running about the pool, breaking up the moon's 
reflection ; then silence again, and the lap of ripples 
on the shore. 

You can go home now ; you will see nothing more 
to-night. There 's a beaver over under the other 
bank, in the shadow where you cannot see him, just 
his eyes and ears above water, watching you. He will 
not stir; nor will another beaver come out till you 



ioo Ways of Wood Folk. 

go away. As you find your canoe and paddle back 
to camp, a ripple made by a beaver's nose follows 
silently in the shadow of the alders. At the bend 
of the river where you disappear, the ripple halts a 
while, like a projecting stub in the current, then turns 
and goes swiftly back. There is another splash ; the 
builders come out again ; a dozen ripples are scat- 
tering star reflections all over the pool ; while the little 
wood folk pause a moment to look at the new works 
curiously, then go their ways, shy, silent, industrious, 
through the wilderness night. 




VII. CROW-WAYS. 

HE crow is very much of a rascal — 
that is, if any creature can be called a 
rascal for following out natural and ras- 
cally inclinations. I first came to this 
conclusion one early morning, several 
years ago, as I watched an old crow diligently explor- 
ing a fringe of bushes that grew along the wall of a 
deserted pasture. He had eaten a clutch of thrush'-s 
eggs, and carried off three young sparrows to feed his 
own young, before I found out what he was about. 
Since then I have surprised him often at the same 
depredations. 

An old farmer has assured me that he has also 
caught him tormenting his sheep, lighting on their 
backs and pulling the wool out by the roots to get 
fleece for lining his nest. This is a much more seri- 
ous charge than that of pulling up corn, though the 
latter makes almost every farmer his enemy. 

Yet with all his rascality he has many curious and 
interesting ways. In fact, I hardly know another bird 
that so well repays a season's study ; only one must 



102 Ways of Wood Folk. 

be very patient, and put up with frequent disappoint- 
ments if he would learn much of a crow's peculiarities 
by personal observation. How shy he is ! How cun- 
ning and quick to learn wisdom ! Yet he is very easily 
fooled ; and some experiences that ought to teach him 
wisdom he seems to forget within an hour. Almost 
every time I went shooting, in the old barbarian days 
before I learned better, I used to get one or two crows 
from a flock that ranged over my hunting ground by 
simply hiding among the pines and calling like a 
young crow. If the flock was within hearing, it was 
astonishing to hear the loud chorus of haw-haws, and 
to see them come rushing over the same grove where 
a week before they had been fooled in the same way. 
Sometimes, indeed, they seemed to remember; and 
when the pseudo young crow began his racket at the 
bottom of some thick grove they would collect on a 
distant pine tree and haw-haw in vigorous answer. 
But curiosity always got the better of them, and they 
generally compromised by sending over some swift, 
long-winged old flier, only to see him go tumbling 
down at the report of a gun ; and away they would 
go, screaming at the top of their voices, and never 
stopping till they were miles away. Next week they 
would do exactly the same thing. 

Crows, more than any other birds, are fond of excite- 
ment and great crowds; the slightest unusual object 



Crow - Ways. 1 03 

furnishes an occasion for an assembly. A wounded 
bird will create as much stir in a flock of crows as a 
railroad accident does in a village. But when some 
prowling old crow discovers an owl sleeping away the 
sunlight in the top of a great hemlock, his delight and 
excitement know no bounds. There is a suppressed 
frenzy in his very call that every crow in the neigh- 
borhood understands. Come ! come ! everybody come ! 
he seems to be screaming as he circles over the tree- 
top; and within two minutes there are more crow T s 
gathered about that old hemlock than one would 
believe existed within miles of the place. I counted 
over seventy one day, immediately about a tree in 
which one of them had found an owl ; and I think 
there must have been as many more flying about 
the outskirts that I could not count. 

At such times one can approach very near with a 
little caution, and attend, as it were, a crow caucus. 
Though I have attended a great many, I have never 
been able to find any real cause for the excitement. 
Those nearest the owl sit about in the trees cawing 
vociferously ; not a crow is silent. Those on the 
outskirts are flying rapidly about and making, if pos- 
sible, more noise than the inner ring. The owl mean- 
while sits blinking and staring, out of sight in the 
green top. Every moment two or three crows leave 
the ring to fly up close and peep in, and then go 



104 Ways of Wood Folk. 

screaming back again, hopping about on their perches, 
cawing at every breath, nodding their heads, striking 
the branches, and acting for all the world like excited 
stump speakers. 

The din grows louder and louder; fresh voices are 
coming in every minute ; and the owl, wondering in 
some vague way if he is the cause of it all, flies off to 
some other tree where he can be quiet and go to sleep. 
Then, with a great rush and clatter, the crows follow, 
some swift old scout keeping close to the owl and 
screaming all the way to guide the whole cawing 
rabble. When the owl stops they gather round again 
and go through the same performance more excitedly 
than before. So it continues till the owl finds some 
hollow tree and goes in out of sight/leaving them to 
caw themselves tired ; or else he finds some dense 
pine grove, and doubles about here and there, with 
that shadowy noiseless flight of his, till he has thrown 
them off the track. Then he flies into the thickest 
tree he can find, generally outside the grove where 
the crows are looking, and sitting close up against 
the trunk blinks his great yellow eyes and listens 
to the racket that goes sweeping through the grove, 
peering curiously into every thick pine, searching 
everywhere for the lost excitement. 

The crows give him up reluctantly. They circle 
for a few minutes over the grove, rising and falling 



Crow -Ways. 105 

with that beautiful, regular motion that seems like the 
practice drill of all gregarious birds, and generally end 
by collecting in some tree at a distance and hawing 
about it for hours, till some new excitement calls 
them elsewhere. 

Just why they grow so excited over an owl is an 
open question. I have never seen them molest him, 
nor show any tendency other than to stare at him 
occasionally and make a great noise about it. That 
they recognize him as a thief and cannibal I have no 
doubt. But he thieves by night when other birds are 
abed, and as they practise their own thieving by open 
daylight, it may be that they are denouncing him as 
an impostor. Or it may be that the ow r l in his nightly 
prowlings sometimes snatches a young crow off the 
roost. The great horned owl would hardly hesitate 
to eat an old crow if he could catch him napping; 
and so they grow excited, as all birds do in the pres- 
ence of their natural enemies. They make much the 
same kind of a fuss over a haw r k, though the latter 
easily escapes the annoyance by flying swiftly away, 
or by circling slowly upward to a height so dizzy that 
the crows dare not follow. 

In the early spring I have utilized this habit of the 
crows in my search for owls' nests. The crows are 
much more apt to discover its whereabouts than the 
most careful ornithologist, and they gather about it 



106 Ways of Wood Folk. 

frequently for a little excitement. Once I utilized the 
habit for getting a good look at the crows themselves. 
I carried out an old stuffed owl, and set it up on a 
pole close against a great pine tree on the edge of a 
grove. Then I lay down in a thick clump of bushes 
near by and cawed excitedly. The first messenger 
from the flock flew straight over without making any 
discoveries. The second one found the owl, and I had 
no need for further calling. Haw ! haw ! he cried 
deep down in his throat — here he is ! here 's the rascal ! 
In a moment he had the whole flock there ; and for 
nearly ten minutes they kept coming in from every 
direction. A more frenzied lot I never saw. The 
hawing was tremendous, and I hoped to settle at last 
the real cause and outcome of the excitement, when 
an old crow flying close over my hiding place caught 
sight of me looking out through the bushes. How 
he made himself heard or understood in the din I do 
not know ; but the crow is never too excited to heed 
a danger note. The next moment the whole flock 
were streaming away across the woods, giving the 
scatter-cry at every flap. 

There is another w r ay in which the crows' love of 
variety is manifest, though in a much more dignified 
way. Occasionally a flock may be surprised sitting 
about in the trees, deeply absorbed in watching a per- 
formance — generally operatic — by one of their num- 



Crow -Ways. 1 07 

ber. The crow's chief note is the hoarse haw, haw 
with which everybody is familiar, and which seems 
capable of expressing everything, from the soft chatter 
of going to bed in the pine tops to the loud deri- 
sion with which he detects all ordinary attempts to 
surprise him. Certain crows, however, have unusual 
vocal abilities, and at times they seem to use them 
for the entertainment of the others. Yet I suspect 
that these vocal gifts are seldom used, or even discov- 
ered, until lack of amusement throws them upon their 
own resources. Certain it is that, whenever a crow 
makes any unusual sounds, there are always several 
more about, hawing vigorously, yet seeming to listen 
attentively. I have caught them at this a score of 
times. 

One September afternoon, while walking quietly 
through the woods, my attention was attracted by an 
unusual sound coming from an oak grove, a favorite 
haunt of gray squirrels. The crows were cawing in 
the same direction ; but every few minutes would 
come a strange cracking sound — c-r-r-rack-a-rack-rack, 
as if some one had a giant nutcracker and were snap- 
ping it rapidly. I stole forward through the low woods 
till I could see perhaps fifty crows perched about in 
the oaks, all very attentive to something going on 
below them that I could not see. 

Not till I had crawled up to the brush fence, on the 



108 Ways of Wood Folk. 

very edge of the grove, and peeked through did I see 
the performer. Out on the end of a long delicate 
branch, a few feet above the ground, a small crow was 
clinging, swaying up and down like a bobolink on a 
cardinal flower, balancing himself gracefully by spread- 
ing his wings, and every few minutes giving the strange 
cracking sound, accompanied by a flirt of his wings 
and tail as the branch swayed upward. At every 
repetition the crows hawed in applause. I watched 
them fully ten minutes before they saw me and flew 
away. 

Several times since, I have been attracted by unu- 
sual sounds, and have surprised a flock of crows which 
were evidently watching a performance by one of their 
number. Once it was a deep musical whistle, much 
like the too-loo-loo of the blue jay (who is the crow's 
cousin, for all his bright colors), but deeper and fuller, 
and without the trill that always marks the blue jay's 
whistle. Once, in some big woods in Maine, it was 
a hoarse bark, utterly unlike a bird call, which made 
me slip heavy shells into my gun and creep forward, 
expecting some strange beast that I had never before 
met. 

The same love of variety and excitement leads the 
crow to investigate any unusual sight or sound that 
catches his attention. Hide anywhere in the woods, 
and make any queer sound you will — play a jews '-harp, 



Crow -JV ays. 1 09 

or pull a devil's fiddle, or just call softly — and first 
comes a blue jay, all agog to find out all about it. 
Next a red squirrel steals down and barks just over 
your head, to make you start if possible. Then, if 
your eyes are sharp, you will see a crow gliding from 
thicket to thicket, keeping out of sight as much as 
possible, but drawing nearer and nearer to investigate 
the unusual sound. And if he is suspicious or unsat- 
isfied, he will hide and wait patiently for you to come 
out and show yourself. 

Not only is he curious about you, and watches you 
as you go about the woods, but he watches his neigh- 
bors as well. When a fox is started you can often 
trace his course, far ahead of your dogs, by the crows 
circling over him and calling rascal, rascal, when- 
ever he shows himself. He watches the ducks and 
plover, the deer and bear ; he knows where they are, 
and what they are doing ; and he will go far out of his 
way to warn them, as well as his own kind, at the 
approach of danger. When birds nest, or foxes den, 
or beasts fight in the woods, he is there to see it. 
When other things fail he will even play jokes, as 
upon one occasion when I saw a young crow hide in 
a hole in a pine tree, and for two hours keep a whole 
flock in a frenzy of excitement by his distressed caw- 
ing. He would venture out when they were at a 
distance, peek all about cautiously to see that no one 



1 1 o Ways of Wood Folk. 

saw him, then set up a heart-rending appeal, only to 
dodge back out of sight when the flock came rushing 
in with a clamor that was deafening. 

Only one of two explanations can account for his 
action in this case ; either he was a young crow who 
did not appreciate the gravity of crying wolf, wolf ! 
when there was no wolf, or else it was a plain game 
of hide-and-seek. When the crows at length found 
him they chased him out of sight, either to chastise 
him, or, as I am inclined now to think, each one 
sought to catch him for the privilege of being the 
next to hide. 

In fact, whenever one hears a flock of crows haw- 
ing away in the woods, he may be sure that some 
excitement is afoot that will well repay his time and 
patience to investigate. 



Since the above article was written, some more 
curious crow-ways have come to light. Here is one 
which seems to throw light on the question of their 
playing games. I found it out one afternoon last 
September, when a vigorous cawing over in the 
woods induced me to leave the orchard, where I was 
picking apples, for the more exciting occupation of 
spying on my dark neighbors. 

The clamor came from an old deserted pasture, 



Crow -Ways. Ill 

bounded on three sides by pine woods, and on the 
fourth by half wild fields that straggled away to the 
dusty road beyond. Once, long ago, there was a 
farm there ; but even the cellars have disappeared, 
and the crows no longer fear the place. 

It was an easy task to creep unobserved through 
the nearest pine grove, and gain a safe hiding place 
under some junipers on the edge of the old pasture. 
The cawing meanwhile was intermittent ; at times it 
broke out in a perfect babel, as if every crow were 
doing his best to outcaw all the others ; again there 
was silence save for an occasional short note, the 
all 's well of the sentinel on guard. The crows are 
never so busy or so interested that they neglect this 
precaution. 

When I reached the junipers, the crows — half a 
hundred of them — were ranged in the pine tops 
along one edge of the open. They were quiet enough, 
save for an occasional scramble for position, evidently 
waiting for something to happen. Down on my 
right, on the fourth or open side of the pasture, a 
solitary old crow was perched in the top of a tall 
hickory. I might have taken him for a sentry but 
for a bright object which he held in his beak. It 
was too far to make out what the object was ; but 
whenever he turned his head it flashed in the sun- 
light like a bit of glass. 



1 1 2 Ways of Wood Folk. 

As I watched him curiously he launched himself 
into the air and came speeding down the center of 
the field, making for the pines at the opposite end. 
Instantly every crow was on the wing ; they shot out 
from both sides, many that I had not seen before, 
all cawing like mad. They rushed upon the old 
fellow from the hickory, and for a few moments it 
was impossible to make out anything except a whirl- 
ing, diving rush of black wings. The din meanwhile 
was deafening. 

Something bright dropped from the excited flock, 
and a single crow swooped after it; but I was too 
much interested in the rush to note what became of 
him. The clamor ceased abruptly. The crows, after 
a short practice in rising, falling, and wheeling to 
command, settled in the pines on both sides of the 
field, where they had been before. And there in 
the hickory was another crow with the same bright, 
flashing thing in his beak. 

There was a long wait this time, as if for a breath- 
ing spell. Then the solitary crow came skimming 
down the field again without warning. The flock 
surrounded him on the moment, with the evident 
intention of hindering his flight as much as possible. 
They flapped their wings in his face ; they zig-zagged 
in front of him ; they attempted to light on his back. 
In vain he twisted and dodged and dropped like 



Crow -Ways. 



113 



a stone. Wherever he turned - 
he found fluttering wings to op- 
pose his flight. The first object of 
the game was apparent : he was try- 
ing to reach the goal of pines op- 
posite the hickory, and the others 
were trying to prevent it. Again 
and again the leader was lost to 




s&~ 










m 



_ 




sight ; but whenever the sun- 
light flashed from the bright 
thing he carried, he 
was certain to be 
found in the very i 
midst of a clamoring 
crowd. Then the second object was clear: the crows 
were trying to confuse him and make him drop 
the talisman. 



1 1 4 Ways of Wood Folk. 

They circled rapidly down the field and back 
again, near the watcher. Suddenly the bright thing 
dropped, reaching the ground before it was discov- 
ered. Three or four crows swooped upon it, and 
a lively scrimmage began for its possession. In the 
midst of the struggle a small crow shot under the 
contestants, and before they knew what was up he 
was scurrying away to the hickory with the coveted 
trinket held as high as he could carry it, as if in 
triumph at his sharp trick. 

The flock settled slowly into the pines again w T ith 
much hawing. There was evidently a question whether 
the play ought to be allowed or not. Everybody had 
something to say about it ; and there was no end of 
objection. At last it was settled good-naturedly, and 
they took places to watch till the new leader should 
give them opportunity for another chase. 

There was no doubt left in the watcher's mind by 
this time as to what the crows were doing. They 
were just playing a game, like so many schoolboys, 
enjoying to the full the long bright hours of the Sep- 
tember afternoon. Did they find the bright object as 
they crossed the pasture on the way from Farmer B's 
corn-field, and the game so suggest itself? Or was the 
game first suggested, and the talisman brought after- 
wards ? Every crow has a secret storehouse, where 
he hides every bright thing he finds. Sometimes it 



Crow - Ways. I 1 5 

is a crevice in the rocks under moss and ferns ; some- 
times the splintered end of a broken branch ; some- 
times a deserted owl's nest in a hollow tree ; often 
a crotch in a big pine, covered carefully by brown 
needles ; but wherever it is, it is full of bright things — 
glass, and china, and beads, and tin, and an old spoon, 
and a silvered buckle — and nobody but the crow 
himself knows how to find it. Did some crow fetch 
his best trinket for the occasion, or was this a special 
thing for games, and kept by the flock where any crow 
could get it ? 

These w r ere some of the interesting things that were 
puzzling the watcher when he noticed that the hickory 
was empty. A flash over against the dark green re- 
vealed the leader. There he was, stealing along in 
the shadow, trying to reach the goal before they saw 
him. A derisive haw announced his discovery. Then 
the fun began again, as noisy, as confusing, as thor- 
oughly enjoyable as ever. 

When the bright object dropped this time, curiosity 
to get possession of it was stronger than my interest 
in the game. Besides, the apples were waiting. I 
jumped up, scattering the crows in wild confusion; 
but as they streamed away I fancied that there was 
still more of the excitement of play than of alarm in 
their flight and clamor. 

The bright object which the leader carried proved 



1 1 6 Ways of Wood Folk. 

to be the handle of a glass cup or pitcher. A frag- 
ment of the vessel itself had broken off with the han- 
dle, so that the ring was complete. Altogether it was 
just the thing for the purpose — bright, and not too 
heavy, and most convenient for a crow to seize and 
carry. Once well gripped, it would take a good deal 
of worrying to make him drop it. 

Who first was " it," as children say in games ? 
Was it a special privilege of the crow who first found 
the talisman, or do the crows have some way of count- 
ing out for the first leader ? There is a school-house 
down that same old dusty road. Sometimes, when at 
play there, I used to notice the crows stealing silently 
from tree to tree in the woods beyond, watching our^ 
play, I have no doubt, as I now had watched theirs. 
Only we have grown older, and forgotten how to play ; 
and they are as much boys as ever. Did they learn 
their game from watching us at tag, I wonder ? And 
do they know coram, and leave-stocks, and prisoners' 
base, and bull-in- the-ring as well ? One could easily 
believe their wise little black heads to be capable of 
any imitation, especially if one had watched them a 
few times, at work and play, when they had no idea 
they were being spied upon. 



VIII. ONE TOUCH OF NATURE. 



HE cheery whistle of a quail 
recalls to most New Eng- 
land people a vision of breezy- 
upland pastures and a mot- 
tled brown bird calling me- 
lodiously from the topmost 
slanting rail of an old sheep- 
fence. Farmers say he fore- 
tells the w r eather, calling, 
More-wet — much-more-wet ! 
Boys say he only proclaims 
his name, Bob White ! Vm 
Bob White! But whether 
he prognosticates or introduces himself, his voice is 
always a welcome one. Those who know the call 
listen with pleasure, and speedily come to love the 
bird that makes it. 

Bob White has another call, more beautiful than his 
boyish whistle, which comparatively few have heard. 
It is a soft liquid yodeling, which the male bird uses 

to call the scattered flock together. One who walks 

117 




1 1 8 Ways of Wood Folk. 

in the woods at sunset sometimes hears it from a tan- 
gle of grapevine and bullbrier. If he has the patience 
to push his way carefully through the underbrush, he 
may see the beautiful Bob on a rock or stump, utter- 
ing the softest and most musical of whistles. He is 
telling his flock that here is a nice place he has found, 
where they can spend the night and be safe from ow r ls 
and prowling foxes. 

If the visitor be very patient, and lie still, he will 
presently hear the pattering of tiny feet on the leaves, 
and see the brown birds come running in from every 
direction. Once in a lifetime, perhaps, he may see 
them gather in a close circle — tails together, heads 
out, like the spokes of a wheel, and so go to sleep for 
the night. Their soft whistlings and chirpings at such 
times form the most delightful sound one ever hears 
in the woods. 

This call of the male bird is not difficult to imitate. 
Hunters who know the birds will occasionally use it to 
call a scattered covey together, or to locate the male 
birds, which generally answer the leader's call. I have 
frequently called a flock of the birds into a thicket at 
sunset, and caught running glimpses of them as they 
hurried about, looking for the bugler who called taps. 

All this occurred to me late one afternoon in the 
great Zoological Gardens at Antwerp. I was watch- 
ing a yard of birds — -three or four hundred represent- 



One Touch of Nature. 1 1 9 

atives of the pheasant family from all over the earth 
that were running about among the rocks and artificial 
copses. Some were almost as wild as if in their native 
woods, especially the smaller birds in the trees ; others 
had grown tame from being constantly fed by visitors. 

It was rather confusing to a bird lover, familiar only 
with home birds, to see all the strange forms and 
colors in the grass, and to hear a chorus of unknown 
notes from trees and underbrush. But suddenly there 
was a touch of naturalness. That beautiful brown 
bird with the shapely body and the quick, nervous run ! 
No one could mistake him ; it was Bob White. And 
with him came a flash of the dear New England 
landscape three thousand miles away. Another and 
another showed himself and was gone. Then I thought 
of the woods at sunset, and began to call softly. 

The carnivora were being fed not far away ; a fright- 
ful uproar came from the cages. The coughing roar of 
a male lion made the air shiver. Cockatoos screamed ; 
noisy parrots squawked hideously. Children were 
playing and shouting near by. In the yard itself fifty 
birds were singing or crying strange notes. Besides 
all this, the quail I had seen had been hatched far 
from home, under a strange mother. So I had little 
hope of success. 

But as the call grew louder and louder, a liquid 
yodel came like an electric shock from a clump of 



120 Ways of Wood Folk. 

bushes on the left. There he was, looking, listening. 
Another call, and he came running toward me. 
Others appeared from every direction, and soon a 
score of quail were running about, just inside the 
screen, with soft gurglings like a hidden brook, doubly 
delightful to an ear that had longed to hear them. 

City, gardens, beasts, strangers, — all vanished in an 
instant. I was a boy in the fields again. The rough 
New England hillside grew tender and beautiful in 
sunset light ; the hollows were rich in autumn glory. 
The pasture brook sang on its way to the river; a 
robin called from a crimson maple; and all around 
was the dear low, thrilling whistle, and the patter of 
welcome feet on leaves, as Bob White came running 
again to meet his countryman. 




IX. MOOSE CALLING. 

IDNIGHT in the wilderness. 
The belated moon wheels 
slowly above the eastern ridge, 
where for a few minutes past 
a mighty pine and hundreds of 
pointed spruce tops have been 
standing out in inky blackness 
against the gray and brightening background. The 
silver light steals swiftly down the evergreen tops, 
sending long black shadows creeping before it, and 
falls glistening and shimmering across the sleeping 
waters of a forest lake. No ripple breaks its polished 
surface ; no plash of musquash or leaping trout sends 
its vibrations up into the still, frosty air ; no sound of 
beast or bird awakens the echoes of the silent forest. 
Nature seems dying, her life frozen out of her by the 
chill of the October night ; and no voice tells of her 
suffering. 

A moment ago the little lake lay all black and 
uniform, like a great well among the hills, with only 
glimmering star-points to reveal its surface. Now, 



122 Ways of Wood Folk. 

down in a bay below a grassy point, where the dark 
shadows of the eastern shore reach almost across, a 
dark object is lying silent and motionless on the lake. 
Its side seems gray and uncertain above the water ; 
at either end is a dark mass, that in the increasing 
light takes the form of human head and shoulders. 
A bark canoe with two occupants is before us ; but 
so still, so lifeless apparently, that till now we thought 
it part of the shore beyond. 

There is a movement in the stern ; the pro- 
found stillness is suddenly broken by a frightful 
roar: M-wah-uh / M-waah-uh ! M-w-wd^a-a-cni ! The 
echoes rouse themselves swiftly, and rush away con- 
fused and broken, to and fro across the lake. As 
they die away among the hills there is a sound from 
the canoe as if an animal were walking in shallow 7 
water, splash, splash, splash, klop ! then silence again, 
that is not dead, but listening. 

A half-hour passes ; but not for an instant does 
the listening tension of the lake relax. Then the 
loud bellow rings out again, startling us and the 
echoes, though we were listening for it. This time 
the tension increases an hundredfold ; every nerve 
is strained ; every muscle ready. Hardly have the 
echoes been lost when from far up the ridges comes 
a deep, sudden, ugly roar that penetrates the woods 
like a rifle-shot. Again it comes, and nearer! Down 



Moose Calling. 123 

in the canoe a paddle blade touches the water noise- 
lessly from the stern ; and over the bow there is the 
Hint of moonlight on a rifle barrel. The roar is now 
continuous on the summit of the last low ridge. 
Twigs crackle, and branches snap. There is the 
thrashing of mighty antlers among the underbrush, 
the pounding of heavy hoofs upon the earth; and 
straight down the great bull rushes like a tempest, 
nearer, nearer, till he bursts with tremendous crash 
through the last fringe of alders out onto the grassy 
point. — And then the heavy boom of a rifle rolling 
across the startled lake. 

Such is moose calling, in one of its phases — the 
most exciting, the most disappointing, the most try- 
ing way of hunting this noble game. 

The call of the cow moose, which the hunter always 
uses at first, is a low, sudden bellow, quite impossible 
to describe accurately. Before ever hearing it, I had 
frequently asked Indians and hunters what it was like. 
The answers were rather unsatisfactory. " Like a 
tree falling,'' said one. " Like the sudden swell of a 
cataract or the rapids at night," said another. " Like 
a rifle-shot, or a man shouting hoarsely," said a third ; 
and so on till like a menagerie at feeding time was 
my idea of it. 

One night as I sat with my friend at the door of 
our bark tent, eating our belated supper in tired 



I 24 Ways of Wood Folk. 

silence, while the rush of the salmon pool near and 
the sigh of the night wind in the spruces were lulling 
us to sleep as we ate, a sound suddenly filled the 
forest, and was gone. Strangely enough, we pro- 
nounced the word moose together, though neither 
of us had ever heard the sound before. ' Like a 
gun in a fog ' would describe the sound to me better 
than anything else, though after hearing it many 
times the simile is not at all accurate. This first 
indefinite sound is heard early in the season. Later 
it is prolonged and more definite, and often repeated 
as I have given it. 

The answer of the bull varies but little. It is a 
short, hoarse, grunting roar, frightfully ugly when 
close at hand, and leaving no doubt as to the mood 
he is in. Sometimes when a bull is shy, and the 
hunter thinks he is near and listening, though no 
sound gives any idea of his whereabouts, he follows 
the bellow of the cow by the short roar of the bull, 
at the same time snapping the sticks under his feet, 
and thrashing the bushes with a club. Then, if the 
bull answers, look out. Jealous, and fighting mad, 
he hurls himself out of his concealment and rushes 
straight in to meet his rival. Once aroused in this way 
he heeds no danger, and the eye must be clear and 
the muscles steady to stop him surely ere he reaches 
the thicket where the hunter is concealed. Moon- 



Moose Calling. 125 

light is poor stuff to shoot by at best, and an enraged 
bull moose is a very big and a very ugly customer. 
It is a poor thicket, therefore, that does not have at 
least one good tree with conveniently low branches. 
As a rule, however, you may trust your Indian, who 
is an arrant coward, to look out for this very carefully. 

The trumpet w T ith which the calling is done is 
simply a piece of birch bark, rolled up cone-shaped 
with the smooth side within. It is fifteen or sixteen 
inches long, about four inches in diameter at the 
larger, and one inch at the smaller end. The right 
hand is folded round the smaller end for a mouth- 
piece ; into this the caller grunts and roars and 
bellows, at the same time swinging the trumpet's 
mouth in sweeping curves to imitate the peculiar 
quaver of the cow's call. If the bull is near and 
suspicious, the sound is deadened by holding the 
mouth of the trumpet close to the ground. This, 
to me, imitates the real sound more accurately than 
any other attempt. 

So many conditions must be met at once for suc- 
cessful calling, and so warily does a bull approach, 
that the chances are always strongly against the 
hunter's seeing his game. The old bulls are shy from 
much hunting; the younger ones fear the wrath of 
an older rival. It is only once in a lifetime, and far 
back from civilization, where the moose have not 



1 26 n Ways of Wood Folk. 

been hunted, that one's call is swiftly answered by 
a savage old bull that knows no fear. Here one is 
never sure what response his call will bring ; and the 
spice of excitement, and perhaps danger, is added to 
the sport. 

In illustration of the uncertainty of calling, the 
writer recalls with considerable pride his first attempt, 
which was somewhat startling in its success. It was 
on a lake, far back from the settlements, in north- 
ern New Brunswick. One evening, late in August, 
w r hile returning from fishing, I heard the bellow 
of a cow moose on a hardwood ridge above me. 
Along the base of the ridge stretched a bay with 
grassy shores, very narrow where it entered the lake, 
but broadening out to fifty yards across, and reaching 
back half a mile to meet a stream that came down 
from a smaller lake among the hills. All this I 
noted carefully while gliding past ; for it struck me 
as an ideal place for moose calling, if one were 
hunting. 

The next evening, while fishing alone in the cold 
stream referred to, I heard the moose again on the 
same ridge ; and in a sudden spirit of curiosity deter- 
mined to try the effect of a roar or two on her, in 
imitation of an old bull. I had never heard of a cow 
answering the call ; and I had no suspicion then that 
the bull was anywhere near. I was not an expert 



Moose Calling. 127 

caller. Under tuition of my Indian (who was him- 
self a rather poor hand at it) I had practised two or 
three times till he told me, with charming frankness, 
that possibly a man might mistake me for a moose, 
if he had n't heard one very often. So here was a 
chance for more practice and a bit of variety. If it 
frightened her it would do no harm, as we were not 
hunting. 

Running the canoe quietly ashore below where the 
moose had called, I peeled the bark from a young 
birch, rolled it into a trumpet, and, standing on the 
grassy bank, uttered the deep grunt of a bull two 
or three times in quick succession. The effect was 
tremendous.. From the summit of the ridge, not 
two hundred yards above where I stood, the angry 
challenge of a bull was hurled down upon me out 
of the woods. Then it seemed as if a steam engine 
were crashing full speed through the underbrush. 
In fewer seconds than it takes to write it the canoe 
was well out into deep water, lying motionless with 
the bow inshore. A moment later a huge bull plunged 
through the fringe of alders onto the open bank, 
gritting his teeth, grunting, stamping the earth sav- 
agely, and thrashing the bushes with his great antlers 
— as ugly a picture as one would care to meet in 
the woods. 

He seemed bewildered at not seeing his rival, ran 



128 Ways of Wood Folk. 

swiftly along the bank, turned and came swinging 
back again, all the while uttering his hoarse challenge. 
Then the canoe swung in the slight current ; in get- 
ting control of it again the movement attracted his 
attention, and he saw me for the first time. In a 
moment he was down the bank into shallow water, 
striking with his hoofs and tossing his huge head 
up and down like an angry bull. Fortunately the 
water was deep, and he did not try to swim out ; for 
there was not a weapon of any kind in the canoe. 

When I started down towards the lake, after bait- 
ing the bull's fury awhile by shaking the paddle and 
splashing water at him, he followed me along the 
bank, keeping up his threatening demonstrations. 
Down near the lake he plunged suddenly ahead 
before I realized the danger, splashed out into the 
narrow opening in front of the canoe — and there I 
was, trapped. 

It was dark when I at last got out of it. To get by 
the ugly beast in that narrow opening was out of the 
question, as I found out after a half-hour's trying. 
Just at dusk I turned the canoe and paddled slowly 
back; and the moose, leaving his post, followed as 
before along the bank. At the upper side of a little 
bay I paddled close up to shore, and waited till he 
ran round, almost up to me, before backing out into 
deep water. Splashing seemed to madden the brute, 



Moose Calling. 129 

so I splashed him, till in his fury he waded out 
deeper and deeper, to strike the exasperating canoe 
with his antlers. When he would follow no further, 
I swung the canoe suddenly, and headed for the 
opening at a racing stroke. I had a fair start before 
he understood the trick ; but I never turned to see 
how he made the bank and circled the little bay. 
The splash and plunge of hoofs was fearfully close 
behind me as the canoe shot through the opening ; 
and as the little bark swung round on the open waters 
of the lake, for a final splash and flourish of the paddle, 
and a yell or two of derision, there stood the bull in 
the inlet, still thrashing his antlers and gritting his 
teeth ; and there I left him. 

The season of calling is a short one, beginning 
early in September and lasting till the middle of 
October. Occasionally a bull will answer as late as 
November, but this is unusual. In this season a per- 
fectly still night is perhaps the. first requisite. The 
bull, when he hears the call, will often approach to 
within a hundred yards without making a sound. It 
is simply wonderful how still the great brute can be 
as he moves slowly through the woods. Then he 
makes a wide circuit till he has gone completely 
round the spot where he heard the call ; and if there 
is the slightest breeze blowing he scents the danger, 
and is off on the instant. On a still night his big 



130 Ways of Wood Folk. 

trumpet-shaped ears are marvelously acute. Only 
absolute silence on the hunter's part can insure 
success. 

Another condition quite as essential is moonlight. 
The moose sometimes calls just before dusk and just 
before sunrise ; but the bull is more wary at such 
times, and very loth to show himself in the open. 
Night diminishes his extreme caution, and unless he 
has been hunted he responds more readily. Only a 
bright moonlight can give any accuracy to a rifle- 
shot. To attempt it by starlight would result simply 
in frightening the game, or possibly running into 
danger. 

By far the best place for calling, if one is in a 
moose country, is from a canoe on some quiet lake 
or river. A spot is selected midway between two 
open shores, near together if possible. On whichever 
side the bull answers, the canoe is backed silently 
away into the shadow against the opposite bank ; 
and there the hunters crouch motionless till their 
game shows himself clearly in the moonlight on the 
open shore. 

If there is no water in the immediate vicinity of 
the hunting ground, then a thicket in the midst of an 
open spot is the place to call. Such spots are found 
only about the barrens, which are treeless plains scat- 
tered here and there throughout the great northern 



Moose Calling. 131 

wilderness. The scattered thickets on such plains 
are, without doubt, the islands of the ancient lakes 
that once covered them. Here the hunter collects a 
thick nest of dry moss and fir tips at sundown, and 
spreads the thick blanket that he has brought on his 
back all the weary way from camp ; for without it 
the cold of the autumn night would be unendurable 
to one who can neither light a fire nor move about to 
get warm. When a bull answers a call from such a 
spot he will generally circle the barren, just within 
the edge of the surrounding forest, and unless enraged 
by jealousy will seldom venture far out into the open. 
This fearfulness of the open characterizes the moose 
in all places and seasons. He is a creature of the 
forest, never at ease unless within quick reach of its 
protection. 

An exciting incident happened to Mitchell, my 
Indian guide, one autumn, while hunting on one of 
these barrens w r ith a sportsman whom he was guiding. 
He was moose calling one night from a thicket near 
the middle of a narrow barren. No answer came to 
his repeated calling, though for an hour or more he 
had felt quite sure that a bull was within hearing, 
somewhere within the dark fringe of forest. He was 
about to try the roar of the bull, when it suddenly 
burst out of the woods behind them, in exactly the 
opposite quarter from that in which they believed 



132 Ways of Wood Folk. 

their o;ame was concealed. Mitchell started to creeo 
across the thicket, but scarcely had the echoes 
answered when, in front of them, a second challenge 
sounded sharp and fierce ; and they saw, directly 
across the open, the underbrush at the forest's edge 
sway violently, as the bull they had long suspected 
broke out in a towering rage. He was slow in 
advancing, however, and Mitchell glided rapidly 
across the thicket, where a moment later his excited 
hiss called his companion. From the opposite fringe 
of forest the second bull had hurled himself out, and 
was plunging with savage grunts straight towards 
them. 

Crouching low among the firs they awaited his 
headlong rush ; not without many a startled glance 
backward, and a very uncomfortable sense of being 
trapped and frightened, as Mitchell confessed to me 
afterward. He had left his gun in camp; his em- 
ployer had insisted upon it, in his eagerness to kill 
the moose himself. 

The bull came rapidly within rifle-shot. In a 
minute more he would be within their hiding place ; 
and the rifle sight was trying to cover a vital spot, 
when right behind them — at the thicket's edge, it 
seemed — a frightful roar and a furious pounding of 
hoofs brought them to their feet with a bound. A 
second later the rifle was lying among the bushes, 



Moose Calling. 133 

and a panic-stricken hunter was scratching and smash- 
ing in a desperate hurry up among the branches of 
a low spruce, as if only the tiptop were half high 
enough. Mitchell was nowhere to be seen ; unless 
one had the eyes of an owl to find him down among 
the roots of a fallen pine. 

But the first moose smashed straight through the 
thicket without looking up or down ; and out on the 
open barren a tremendous struggle began. There 
was a minute's confused uproar, of savage grunts 
and clashing antlers and pounding hoofs and hoarse, 
labored breathing ; then the excitement of the fight 
was too strong to be resisted, and a dark form wrig- 
gled out from among the roots, only to stretch itself 
flat under a bush and peer cautiously at the struggling 
brutes not thirty feet away. Twice Mitchell hissed 
for his employer to come down ; but that worthy was 
safe astride the highest branch that would bear his 
weight, with no desire evidently for a better view of 
the fight. Then Mitchell found the rifle among the 
bushes and, waiting till the bulls backed away for one 
of their furious charges, killed the larger one in his 
tracks. The second stood startled an instant, with 
raised head and muscles quivering, then dashed away 
across the barren and into the forest. 

Such encounters are often numbered among the 
tragedies of the great wilderness. In tramping 



134 Ways of Wood Folk. 

through the forest one sometimes comes upon two 
sets of huge antlers locked firmly together, and white 
bones, picked clean by hungry prowlers. It needs 
no written record to tell their story. 

Once I saw a duel that resulted differently. I 
heard a terrific uproar, and crept through the woods, 
thinking to have a savage wilderness spectacle all to 
myself. Two young bulls were fighting desperately 
in an open glade, just because they were strong and 
proud of their first big horns. 

But I was not alone, as I expected. A great flock 
of crossbills swooped down into the spruces, and 
stopped whistling in their astonishment. A dozen 
red squirrels snickered and barked their approval, 
as the bulls butted each other. Meeko is always 
glad when mischief is afoot. High overhead floated 
a rare woods' raven, his head bent sharply downward 
to see. Moose-birds flitted in restless excitement 
from tree to bush. Kagax the weasel postponed his 
bloodthirsty errand to the young rabbits. And just 
beside me, under the fir tips, Tookhees the wood- 
mouse forgot his fear of the owl and the fox and his 
hundred enemies, and sat by his den in broad day- 
light, rubbing his whiskers nervously. 

So we watched, till the bull that was getting the 
worst of it backed near me, and got my wind, and the 
fight was over. 






X. CH'GEEGEE-LOKH-SIS. 




HAT is the name which the northern 
Indians give to the black-capped tit- 
mouse, or chickadee. " Little friend 
Ch'geegee" is what it means; for the 
Indians, like everybody else who knows 
Chickadee, are fond of this cheery little brightener of 
the northern woods. The first time I asked Simmo 
what his people called the bird, he answered with a 
smile. Since then I have asked other Indians, and 
always a smile, a pleased look lit up the dark grim 

135 



136 Ways of Wood Folk. 

faces as they told me. It is another tribute to the 
bright little bird's influence. 

Chickadee wears well. He is not in the least a 
creature of moods. You step out of your door some 
bright morning, and there he is among the shrubs, 
flitting from twig to twig ; now hanging head down 
from the very tip to look into a terminal bud ; now 
winding upward about a branch, looking industriously 
into every bud and crevice. An insect must hide well 
to escape those bright eyes. He is helping you raise 
your plants. He looks up brightly as you approach, 
hops fearlessly down and looks at you with frank, 
innocent eyes. Chick a dee dee dee dee ! Tsic a de-e-e ? 
— this last with a rising inflection, as if he were ask- 
ing how you were, after he had said good-morning. 
Then he turns to his insect hunting again, for he 
never wastes more than a moment talking. But he 
twitters sociably as he works. 

You meet him again in the depths of the wilder- 
ness. The smoke of your camp fire has hardly risen 
to the spruce tops when close beside you sounds the 
same cheerful greeting and inquiry for your health. 
There he is on the birch twig, bright and happy and 
fearless ! He comes down by the fire to see if any- 
thing has boiled over which he may dispose of. He 
picks up gratefully the crumbs you scatter at* your 
feet. He trusts you. — See ! he rests a moment on 



Cfi geegee-lokh-sis. 137 

the finger you extend, looks curiously at the nail, 
and sounds it with his bill to see if it shelters any 
harmful insect. Then he goes back to his birch 
twigs. 

On summer days he never overflows with the rol- 
licksomeness of bobolink and oriole, but takes his 
abundance in quiet contentment. I suspect it is 
because he works harder winters, and his enjoyment 
is more deep than theirs. In winter when the snow 
lies deep, he is the life of the forest. He calls to you 
from the edges of the bleak caribou barrens, and his 
greeting somehow suggests the May. He comes into 
your rude bark camp, and eats of your simple fare, 
and leaves a bit of sunshine behind him. He goes 
with you, as you force your way heavily through the 
fir thickets on snowshoes. He is hungry, perhaps, 
like you, but his note is none the less cheery and 
hopeful. 

When the sun shines hot in August, he finds you 
lying under the alders, with the lake breeze in your 
face, and he opens his eyes very wide and says: u Tsic 
a dee-e-e ? I saw you last winter. Those were hard 
times. But it 's good to be here now." And when the 
rain pours down, and the woods are drenched, and camp 
life seems beastly altogether, he appears suddenly with 
greeting cheery as the sunshine. "Tsic a de-e-e-e? 
Don't you remember yesterday ? It rains, to be sure, 



138 Ways of Wood Folk. 

but the insects are plenty, and to-morrow the sun 
will shine." His cheerfulness is contagious. Your 
thoughts are better than before he came. 

Really, he is a wonderful little fellow ; there is no 
end to the good he does. Again and again I have 
seen a man grow better tempered or more cheerful, 
without knowing why he did so, just because Chicka- 
dee stopped a moment to be cheery and sociable. I 
remember once when a party of four made camp 
after a driving rain-storm. Everybody was wet ; every- 
thing soaking. The lazy man had upset a canoe, and 
all the dry clothes and blankets had just been fished 
out of the river. Now the lazy man stood before the 
fire, looking after his own comfort. The other three 
worked like beavers, making camp. They were in 
ill humor, cold, wet, hungry, irritated. They said 
nothing. 

A flock of chickadees came down with sunny greet- 
ings, fearless, trustful, never obtrusive. They looked 
innocently into human faces and pretended that they 
did not see the irritation there. "Tsic a dee. I wish 
I could help. Perhaps I can. Tic a dee-e-e?" — with 
that gentle, sweetly insinuating up slide at the end. 
Somebody spoke, for the first time in' half an hour, 
and it was n't a growl. Presently somebody whistled 
— a wee little whistle ; but the tide had turned. 
Then somebody laughed. " 'Pon my word," he said, 



Ctigeegee-lokh-sis. 1 39 

hanging up his wet clothes, " I believe those chicka- 
dees make me feel good-natured. Seem kind of 
cheery, you know, and the crow r d needed it." 

And Chickadee, picking up his cracker crumbs, 
did not act at all as if he had done most to make 
camp comfortable. 

There is another way in w r hich he helps, a more 
material way. Millions of destructive insects live and 
multiply in the buds and tender bark of trees. Other 
birds never see them, but Chickadee and his relations 
leave never a twig unexplored. His bright eyes find 
the tiny eggs hidden under the buds ; his keen ears 
hear the larvae feeding under the bark, and a blow of 
his little bill uncovers them in their mischief-making. 
His services of this kind are enormous, though rarely 
acknowledged. 

Chickadee's nest is always neat and comfortable 
and interesting, just like himself. It is a rare treat 
to find it. He selects an old knot-hole, generally on 
the sheltered side of a dry limb, and digs out the 
rotten wood, making a deep and sometimes winding 
tunnel downward. In the dry wood at the bottom he 
makes a little round pocket and lines it with the 
very softest material. When one finds such a nest, 
with five or six white eggs delicately touched with 
pink lying at the bottom, and a pair of chickadees 
gliding about, half fearful, half trustful, it is altogether 



140 Ways of Wood Folk. 

such a beautiful little spot that I know hardly a boy 
who would be mean enough to disturb it. 

One thing about the nests has always puzzled me. 
The soft lining has generally more or less rabbit fur. 
Sometimes, indeed, there is nothing else, and a softer 
nest one could not wish to see. But where does he 
get it ? He would not, I am sure, pull it out of Br'er 
Rabbit, as the crow sometimes pulls wool from the 
sheep's backs. Are his eyes bright enough to find it 
hair by hair where the wind has blown it, down among 
the leaves ? If so, it must be slow work ; but Chick- 
adee is very patient. Sometimes in spring you may 
surprise him on the ground, where he never goes for 
food ; but at such times he is always shy, and flits up 
among the birch twigs, and twitters, and goes through 
an astonishing gymnastic performance, as if to distract 
your attention from his former unusual one. That is 
only because you are near his nest. If he has a bit 
of rabbit fur in his bill meanwhile, your eyes are not 
sharp enough to see it. 

Once after such a performance I pretended to go 
away; but I only hid in a pine thicket. Chickadee 
listened awhile, then hopped down to the ground, 
picked up something that I could not see, and flew 
away. I have no doubt it was the lining for his nest 
near by. He had dropped it when I surprised him, 
so that I should not suspect him of nest-building. 



Ch 'geegee-lokh-sis. 1 4 1 

Such a bright, helpful little fellow should have 
never an enemy in the world ; and I think he has to 
contend against fewer than most birds. The shrike 
is his worst enemy, the swift swoop of his cruel beak 
being always fatal in a flock of chickadees. For- 
tunately the shrike is rare with us; one seldom finds 
his nest, with poor Chickadee impaled on a sharp 
thorn near by, surrounded by a varied lot of ugly 
beetles. I suspect the owls sometimes hunt him at 
night ; but he sleeps in the thick pine shrubs, close 
up against a branch, with the pine needles all about 
him, making it very dark ; and what with the darkness, 
and the needles to stick in his eyes, the owl generally 
gives up the search and hunts in more open woods. 

Sometimes the hawks try to catch him, but it takes 
a very quick and a very small pair of wings to follow 
Chickadee. Once I was watching him hanging head 
down from an oak twig to which the dead leaves were 
clinging; for it was winter. Suddenly there was a 
rush of air, a flash of mottled wings and fierce yel- 
low eyes and cruel claws. Chickadee whisked out of 
sight under a leaf. The hawk passed on, brushing 
his pinions. A brown feather floated down among 
the oak leaves. Then Chickadee was hanging head 
down, just where he was before. " Tsic a dee ? Did n't 
I fool him ! " he seemed to say. He had just gone 
round his twig, and under a leaf, and back again ; and 



142 Ways of Wood Folk. 

the clanger was over. When a hawk misses like that 
he never strikes again. 

Boys generally have a kind of sympathetic liking 
for Chickadee. They may be cruel or thoughtless to 
other birds, but seldom so to him. He seems some- 
how like themselves. 

Two barefoot boys with bows and arrows were 
hunting, one September day, about the half-grown 
thickets of an old pasture. The older was teaching 
the younger how to shoot. A robin, a chipmunk, 
and two or three sparrows were already stowed away 
in their jacket pockets; a brown rabbit hung from 
the older boy's shoulder. Suddenly the younger 
raised his bow and drew the arrow back to its head. 
Just in front a chickadee hung and twittered among 
the birch twigs. But the older boy seized his arm. 

" Don't shoot — don't shoot him ! " he said. 

" But why not ? " 

" 'Cause you must n't — you must never kill a chick- 
adee." 

And the younger, influenced more by a certain 
mysterious shake of the head than by the words, 
slacked his bow cheerfully ; and with a last wide-eyed 
look at the little gray bird that twittered and swung 
so fearlessly near them, the two boys went on with 
their hunting. 

No one ever taught the older boy to discriminate 



C/i 'geegee-lokh-sis. 143 

between a chickadee and other birds ; no one else 
ever instructed the younger. Yet somehow both felt, 
and still feel after many years, that there is a differ- 
ence. It is always so with boys. They are friends 
of whatever trusts them and is fearless. Chickadee's 
own personality, his cheery ways and trustful nature 
had taught them, though they knew it not. And 
among all the boys of that neighborhood there is 
still a law, which no man gave, of which no man 
knows the origin, a law as unalterable as that of the 
Medes and Persians : Never kill a chickadee. 

If you ask the boy there who tells you the law, 
" Why not a chickadee as well as a sparrow ? " he 
shakes his head as of yore, and answers dogmatically : 
" 'Cause you must n't." 



CHICKADEE'S SECRET. 

If you meet Chickadee in May with a bit of rabbit 
fur in his mouth, or if he seem preoccupied or ab- 
sorbed, you may know that he is building a nest, 
or has a wife and children near by to take care of. 
If you know him well, you may even feel hurt that 
the little friend, who shared your camp and fed from 
your dish last winter, should this spring seem just as 



144 Ways of Wood Folk. 

frank, yet never invite you to his camp, or should 
even lead you away from it. But the soft little nest 
in the old knot-hole is the one secret of Chickadee's 
life ; and the little deceptions by which he tries to 
keep it are at times so childlike, so transparent, that 
they are even more interesting than his frankness. 

One afternoon in May I was hunting, without a 
gun, about an old deserted farm among the hills — 
one of those sunny places that the birds love, because 
some sense of the human beings who once lived there 
still clings about the half wild fields and gives pro- 
tection. The day was bright and warm. The birds 
were everywhere, flashing out of the pine thickets 
into the birches in all the joyfulness of nest-building, 
and filling the air with life and melody. It is poor 
hunting to move about at such a time. Either the 
hunter or his game must be still. Here the birds 
were moving constantly; one might see more of them 
and their ways by just keeping quiet and invisible. 

I sat down on the outer edge of a pine thicket, and 
became as much as possible a part of the old stump 
which was my seat. Just in front an old four-rail 
fence wandered across the deserted pasture, struggling 
against the blackberry vines, which grew profusely 
about it and seemed to be tugging at the lower rail 
to pull the old fence down to ruin. On either side it 
disappeared into thickets of birch and oak and pitch 



CJi geegee-lokh-sis. 1 45 

pine, planted, as were the blackberry vines, by birds 
that stopped to rest a moment on the old fence or 
to satisfy their curiosity. Stout young trees had 
crowded it aside and broken it. Here and there a 
leaning post was overgrown w r ith woodbine. The 
rails w T ere gray and moss-grown. Nature was try- 
ing hard to make it a bit of the landscape ; it could 
not much longer retain its individuality. The wild 
things of the woods had long accepted it as theirs, 
though not quite as they accepted the vines and 
trees. 

As I sat there a robin hurled himself upon it 
from the top of a young cedar where he had been, 
a moment before, practising his mating song. He 
did not intend to light, but some idle curiosity, like 
my own, made him pause a moment on the old gray 
rail. Then a woodpecker lit on the side of a post, 
and sounded it softly. But he was too near the 
ground, too near his enemies to make a noise ; so 
he flew to a higher perch and beat a tattoo that made 
the woods ring. He was safe there, and could make 
as much noise as he pleased. A wood-mouse stirred 
the vines and appeared for an instant on the lower 
rail, then disappeared as if very much frightened at 
having shown himself in the sunlight. He always 
does just so at his first appearance. 

Presently a red squirrel rushes out of the thicket 



146 Ways of Wood Folk. 

at the left, scurries along the rails and up and down the 
posts. He goes like a little red whirlwind, though he 
has nothing whatever to hurry about. Just opposite my 
stump he stops his rush with marvelous suddenness ; 
chatters, barks, scolds, tries to make me move ; then 
goes on and out of sight at the same breakneck rush. 
A jay stops a moment in a young hickory above the 
fence to whistle his curiosity, just as if he had not 
seen it fifty times before. A curiosity to him never 
grows old. He does not scream now ; it is his nest- 
ing time. — And so on through the afternoon. The 
old fence is becoming a part of the woods ; and every 
wild thing that passes by stops to get acquainted. 

I was weaving an idle history of the old fence, 
when a chickadee twittered in the pine behind me. 
As I turned, he flew over me and lit on the fence 
in front. He had something in his beak ; so I 
watched to find his nest ; for I wanted very much 
to see him at work. Chickadee had never seemed 
afraid of me, and I thought he would trust me now. 
But he did n't. He would not go near his nest. 
Instead he began hopping about the old rail, and 
pretended to be very busy hunting for insects. 

Presently his mate appeared, and with a sharp note 
he called her down beside him. Then both birds 
hopped and twittered about the rail, with apparently 
never a care in the world. The male especially 



C/i 'geegee-lokh-sis. 



147 



seemed just in the mood for a frolic. He ran up 
and down the mossy rail ; he whirled about it till 
he looked like a little gray pinwheel ; he hung head 
down by his toes, dropped, and turned like a cat, so 




as to light on his feet on the rail below. While 
watching his performance, I hardly noticed that his 
mate had gone till she reappeared suddenly on the 
rail beside him. Then he disappeared, while she 
kept up the performance on the rail, with more 



148 Ways of Wood Folk. 

of a twitter, perhaps, and less of gymnastics. In a 
few moments both birds were together again and 
flew into the pines out of sight. 

I had almost forgotten them in watching other 
birds, when they reappeared on the rail, ten or fifteen 
minutes later, and went through a very similar per- 
formance. This was unusual, certainly ; and I sat 
very quiet, very much interested, though a bit puz- 
zled, and a bit disappointed that they had not gone 
to their nest. They had some material in their 
beaks both times when they appeared on the rail, 
and were now probably off hunting for more — for 
rabbit fur, perhaps, in the old orchard. But what had 
they done with it ? " Perhaps," I thought, " they 
dropped it to deceive me." Chickadee does that some- 
times. " But why did one bird stay on the rail ? 
Perhaps " — Well, I would look and see. 

I left my stump as the idea struck me, and began 
to examine the posts of the old fence very carefully. 
Chickadee's nest was there somewhere. In the second 
post on the left I found it, a tiny knot-hole, which 
Chickadee had hollowed out deep and lined with 
rabbit fur. It was well hidden by the vines that 
almost covered the old post, and gray moss grew all 
about the entrance. A prettier nest I never found. 

I went back to my stump and sat down where I 
could just see the dark little hole that led to the 



CK geegee-lokh-sis. 1 49 

nest. No other birds interested me now till the 
chickadees came back. They were soon there, hop- 
ping about on the rail as before, with just a wee note 
of surprise in their soft twitter that I had changed 
my position. This time I was not to be deceived 
by a gymnastic performance, however interesting. I 
kept my eyes fastened on the nest. The male was 
undoubtedly going through with his most difficult 
feats, and doing his best to engage my attention, 
when I saw his mate glide suddenly from behind the 
post and disappear into her doorway. I could hardly 
be sure it was a bird. It seemed rather as if the 
wind had stirred a little bundle of gray moss. Had 
she moved slowly I might not have seen her, so 
closely did her soft gray cloak blend with the weather- 
beaten wood and the moss. 

In a few moments she reappeared, waited a moment 
with her tiny head just peeking out of the knot-hole, 
flashed round the post out of sight, and when I saw 
her again it was as she reappeared suddenly beside 
the male. 

Then I watched him. While his mate whisked 
about the top rail he dropped to the middle one, 
hopped gradually to one side, then dropped suddenly 
to the lowest one, half hidden by vines, and disap- 
peared. I turned my eyes to the nest. In a moment 
there he was — just a little gray flash, appearing for 



I 5° Ways of Wood Folk. 

an instant from behind the post, only to disappear 
into the dark entrance. When he came out again 
I had but a glimpse of him till he appeared on the 
rail near me beside his mate. 

Their little ruse was now quite evident. They had 
come back from gathering rabbit fur, and found me 
unexpectedly near their nest. Instead of making a 
fuss and betraying it, as other birds might do, they 
lit on the rail before me, and were as sociable as only 
chickadees know how to be. While one entertained 
me, and kept my attention, the other dropped to the 
bottom rail and stole along behind it ; then up behind 
the post that held their nest, and back the same way, 
after leaving his material. Then he held my atten- 
tion while his mate did the same thing. 

Simple as their little device was, it deceived me at 
first, and would have deceived me permanently had I 
not known something of chickadees' ways, and found 
the nest while they were away. Game birds have 
the trick of decoying one aw r ay from their nest. I 
am not sure that all birds do not have more or less of 
the same instinct ; but certainly none ever before or 
since used it so well with me as Ch geegee. 

For two hours or more I sat there beside the pine 
thicket, while the chickadees came and went. Some- 
times they approached the nest from the other side, 
and I did not see them, or perhaps got only a glimpse 



Ctigeegee-lokh-sis. 1 5 1 

as they glided into their doorway. Whenever they 
approached from my side, they always stopped on the 
rail before me and went through with their little 
entertainment. Gradually they grew more confident, 
and were less careful to conceal their movements 
than at first. Sometimes only one came, and after 
a short performance disappeared. Perhaps they 
thought me harmless, or that they had deceived me 
so well at first that I did not even suspect them of 
nest-building. Anyway, I never pretended I knew. 
As the afternoon wore away, and the sun dropped 
into the pine tops, the chickadees grew hungry, and 
left their work until the morrow r . They were calling 
among the young birch buds as I left them, busy and 
sociable together, hunting their supper. 




XL A FELLOW OF EXPEDIENTS. 

MONG the birds there is one whose per- 
sonal appearance is rapidly changing. 
He illustrates in his present life a 
process well known historically to all 
naturalists, viz., the modification of form 
resulting from changed environment. 
I refer to the golden-winged woodpecker, perhaps 
the most beautifully marked bird of the North, 
whose names are as varied as his habits and accom- 
plishments. 

Nature intended him to get his living, as do the 
other woodpeckers, by boring into old trees and 
stumps for the insects that live on the decaying 
wood. For this purpose she gave him the straight, 
sharp, wedge-shaped bill, just calculated for cutting 
out chips ; the very long horn-tipped tongue for 
thrusting into the holes he makes ; the peculiar 
arrangement of toes, two forward and tw r o back ; and 
the stiff, spiny tail-feathers for supporting himself 
against the side of a tree as he works. But getting 

his living so means hard work, and he has discovered 

152 



A Fellow of Expedients. 153 

for himself a much easier way. One now frequently 
surprises him on the ground in old pastures and 
orchards, floundering about rather awkwardly (for his 
little feet were never intended for walking) after the 
crickets and grasshoppers that abound there. Still 
he finds the work of catching them much easier than 
boring into dry old trees, and the insects themselves 
much larger and more satisfactory. 

A single glance will show 7 how much this new way 
of living has changed him from the other wood- 
peckers. The bill is no longer straight, but has a 
decided curve, like the thrushes ; and instead of the 
chisel-shaped edge there is a rounded point. The 
red tuft on the head, which marks all the woodpecker 
family, would be too conspicuous on the ground. In 
its place we find a red crescent well down on the neck, 
and partially hidden by the short gray feathers about 
it. The point of the tongue is less horny, and from 
the stiff points of the tail-feathers laminae are begin- 
ning to grow, making them more like other birds'. 
A future generation will undoubtedly wonder where 
this peculiar kind of thrush got his unusual tongue 
and tail, just as w r e wonder at the deformed little feet 
and strange ways of a cuckoo. 

The habits of this bird are a curious compound of 
his old life in the woods and his new preference for 
the open fields and farms. Sometimes the nest is in 



154 Ways of Wood Folk. 

the very heart of the woods, where the bird glides in 
and out, silent as a crow in nesting time. His feeding 
place meanwhile may be an old pasture half a mile 
away, where he calls loudly, and frolics about as if he 
had never a care or a fear in the world. But the nest 
is now more frequently in a wild orchard, where the 
bird finds an old knot-hole and digs down through 
the soft wood, making a deep nest with very little 
trouble. When the knot-hole is not well situated, 
he finds a large decayed limb and drills through" the 
outer hard shell, then digs down a foot or more 
through the soft wood, and makes a nest. In this 
nest the rain never troubles him, for he very provi- 
dently drills the entrance on the under side of the 
limb. 

Like many other birds, he has discovered that the 
farmer is his friend. Occasionally, therefore, he neg- 
lects to build a deep nest, simply hollowing out an 
old knot-hole, and depending on the presence of man 
for protection from hawks and owls. At such times 
the bird very soon learns to recognize those who 
belong in the orchard, and loses the extreme shyness 
that characterizes him at all other times. 

Once a farmer, knowing my interest in birds, invited 
me to come and see a golden-winged woodpecker, 
which in her confidence had built so shallow a nest 
that she could be seen sitting on the eggs like a robin. 



A Fellow of Expedients. 155 

She was so tame, he said, that in going to his work he 
sometimes passed under the tree without disturbing 
her. The moment we crossed the wall within sight 
of the nest, the bird slipped away out of the orchard. 
Wishing to test her, we withdrew and waited till she 
returned. Then the farmer passed within a few feet 
without disturbing her in the least. Ten minutes 
later I followed him, and the bird flew away again 
as I crossed the wall. 

The notes of the golden- wing — much more varied 
and musical than those of other woodpeckers — are 
probably the results of his new free life, and the modi- 
fied tongue and bill. In the woods one seldom hears 
from him anything but the rattling rat-a-tat-tat, as he 
hammers away on a dry old pine stub. As a rule he 
seems to do this more for the noise it makes, and the 
exercise of his abilities, than because he expects to 
find insects inside ; except in winter time, when he 
goes back to his old ways. But out in the fields he 
has a variety of notes. Sometimes it is a loud kee-uk, 
like the scream of a blue jay divided into two syllables, 
with the accent on the last. Again it is a loud cheery 
whistling call, of very short notes run close together, 
with accent on every other one. Again he teeters 
up and down on the end of an old fence rail with a 
rollicking eekoo, eekoo, eekoo, that sounds more like a 
laugh than anything else among the birds. In most 



156 Ways of Wood Folk. 

of his musical efforts the golden-wing, instead of 
clinging to the side of a tree, sits across the limb, like 
other birds. 

A curious habit which the bird has adopted with 
advancing civilization is that of providing himself 
with a sheltered sleeping place from the storms and 
cold of winter. Late in the fall he finds a deserted 
building, and after a great deal of shy inspection, 
to satisfy himself that no one is within, drills a hole 
through the side. He has then a comfortable place to 
sleep, and an abundance of decaying wood in which 
to hunt insects on stormy days. An ice-house is a 
favorite location for him, the warm sawdust furnish- 
ing a good burrowing place for a nest or sleeping 
room. When a building is used as a nesting place, 
the bird very cunningly drills the entrance close up 
under the eaves, where it is sheltered from storms, and 
at the same time out of sight of all prying eyes. 

During the winter several birds often occupy one 
building together. I know of one old deserted barn 
where last year five of the birds lived very peaceably ; 
though what they were doing there in the daytime I 
could never quite make out. At almost any hour of the 
day, if one approached very cautiously and thumped 
the side of the barn, some of the birds would dash out 
in great alarm, never stopping to look behind them. 
At first there were but three entrances ; but after I 



A Fellow of Expedients. 157 

had surprised them a few times, two more were added ; 
whether to get out more quickly when all were inside, 
or simply for the sake of drilling the holes, I do not 
know. Sometimes a pair of birds will have five or 
six holes drilled, generally on the same side of the 
building. 

Two things about my family in the old barn aroused 
my curiosity — what they were doing there by day, 
and how they got out so quickly when alarmed. The 
only way it seemed possible for them to dash out on 
the instant, as they did, was to fly straight through. 
But the holes were too small, and no bird but a bank- 
swallow would have attempted such a thing. 

One day I drove the birds out, then crawled in 
under a sill on the opposite side, and hid in a corner 
of the loft without disturbing anything inside. It was 
a long wait in the stuffy old place before one of the 
birds came back. I heard him light first on the roof ; 
then his little head appeared at one of the holes as he 
sat just below, against the side of the barn, looking 
and listening before coming in. Quite satisfied after 
a minute or two that nobody was inside, he scrambled 
in and flew down to a corner in which was a lot of 
old hay and rubbish. Here he began a great rustle 
and stirring about, like a squirrel in autumn leaves, 
probably after insects, though it was too dark to see 
just what he was doing. It sounded part of the time 



158 Ways of Wood Folk. 

as if he were scratching aside the hay, much as a hen 
would have done. If so, his two little front toes must 
have made sad work of it, with the two hind ones 
always getting doubled up In the way. When I 
thumped suddenly against the side of the barn, he 
hurled himself like a shot at one of the holes, alight- 
ing just below it, and stuck there in a way that 
reminded me of the chewed-paper balls that boys 
used to throw against the blackboard in school. I 
could hear plainly the thump of his little feet as he 
struck. With the same movement, and without paus- 
ing an instant, he dived through headlong, aided by a 
spring from his tail, much as a jumping jack goes over 
the head of his stick, only much more rapidly. Hardly 
had he gone before another appeared, to go through 
the same program. 

Though much shyer than other birds of the farm, 
he often ventures up close to the house and doorway 
in the early morning, before any one is stirring. One 
spring morning I was awakened by a strange little 
pattering sound, and, opening my eyes, was astonished 
to see one of these birds on the sash of the open win- 
dow within five feet of my hand. Half closing my 
eyes, I kept very still and watched. Just in front of 
him, on the bureau, w T as a stuffed golden-wing, with 
wings and tail spread to show to best advantage the 
beautiful plumage. He had seen it in flying by, and 



A Fellow of Expedients. 159 

now stood hopping back and forth along the window 
sash, uncertain whether to come in or not. Sometimes 
he spread his wings as if on the point of flying in ; 
then he would turn his head to look curiously at me 
and at the strange surroundings, and, afraid to venture 
in, endeavor to attract the attention of the stuffed bird, 
whose head was turned away. In the looking-glass 
he saw his own movements repeated. Twice he began 
his love call very softly, but cut it short, as if frightened. 
The echo of the small room made it seem so different 
from the same call in the open fields that I think he 
doubted even his own voice. 

Almost over his head, on a bracket against the wall, 
was another bird, a great hawk, pitched forward on 
his perch, with wings wide spread and fierce eyes 
glaring downward, in the intense attitude a hawk 
takes as he strikes his prey from some lofty watch 
tree. The golden-wing by this time was ready to 
venture in. He had leaned forward with wings spread, 
looking- down at me to be quite sure I was harmless, 
when, turning his head for a final look round, he 
caught sight of the hawk just ready to pounce down 
on him. With a startled kee-uk he fairly tumbled 
back off the window sash, and I caught one glimpse 
of him as he dashed round the corner in full flight. 

What were his impressions, I wonder, as he sat on 
a limb of the old apple tree and thought it all over ? 



160 Ways of Wood Folk. 

Do birds have romances? How much greater won- 
ders had he seen than those of any romance ! And 
do they have any means of communicating them, as 
they sing their love songs? What a w T onderful story 
he could tell, a real story, of a magic palace full of 
strange wonders; of a glittering bit of air that made 
him see himself ; of a giant, all in white, with only his 
head visible; of an enchanted beauty, stretching her 
wings in mute supplication for some brave knight to 
touch her and break the spell, while on high a fierce 
dragon-hawk kept watch, ready to eat up any one who 
should dare enter ! 

And of course none of the birds would believe him. 
He would have to spend the rest of his life explaining ; 
and the others would only whistle, and call him Iagoo, 
the lying woodpecker. On the whole, it would be 
better for a bird with such a very unusual experience 
to keep still about it. 



XII. A TEMPERANCE LESSON FOR 
THE HORNETS. 

AST spring a hornet, one of those long brown 
J^7 double chaps that boys call mud-wasps, 
crept out of his mud shell at the top of 
my window casing, and buzzed in the sun- 
^ shine till I opened the window and let him 




go. Perhaps he remembered his warm quarters, or 
told a companion ; for when the last sunny days of 
October were come, there was a hornet, buzzing 
persistently at the same window till it opened and 
let him in. 

It was a rather rickety old room, though sunny and 
very pleasant, which had been used as a study by 
generations of theological students. Moreover, it was 
considered clean all over, like a boy with his face 
washed, when the floor was swept ; and no storm of 
general house cleaning ever disturbed its peace. So 
overhead, where the ceiling sagged from the walls, 
and in dusty chinks about doors and windows that no 
broom ever harried, a family of spiders, some mice, a 
daddy-long-legs, two crickets, and a bluebottle fly, 

161 



1 62 Ways of Wood Folk. 

besides the hornet, found snug quarters in their 
season, and a welcome. 

The hornet stayed about, contentedly enough, for 
a week or more, crawling over the window panes till 
they were thoroughly explored, and occasionally tak- 
ing a look through the scattered papers on the table. 
Once he sauntered up to the end of the penholder I 
was using, and stayed there, balancing himself, spread- 
ing his wings, and looking interested while the greater 
part of a letter was finished. Then he crawled down 
over my fingers till he wet his feet in the ink ; where- 
upon he buzzed off in high dudgeon to dry them in 
the sun. 

At first he was sociable enough, and peaceable as 
one could wish; but one night, when it was chilly, he 
stowed himself away to sleep under the pillow. When 
I laid my head upon it, he objected to the extra weight, 
and drove me ignominiously from my own bed. An- 
other time he crawled into a handkerchief. When I 
picked it up to use it, after the light was out, he stung 
me on the nose, not understanding the situation. In 
whacking him off I broke one of his legs, and made 
his wings all awry. After that he would have nothing 
more to do with me, but kept to his own window as 
long as the fine weather lasted. 

When the November storms came, he went up 
to a big crack in the window casing, whence he had 



A Temperance Lesson for the Hornets. 1 63 



emerged in the spring, and crept in, and went to 
sleep. It was pleasant there, and at noontime, on 
days when the sun shone, it streamed brightly into 
his doorway, waking him out of his winter sleep. As 
late as December he would come out occasionally at 






■ ■ ■■' if s*~- 




vm z-A 



lip " : MM / 




midday to walk about and spread his wings in the 
sun. Then a snow-storm came, and he disappeared 
for two weeks. 

One day, when a student was sick, a tumbler of 
medicine had been carelessly left on the broad win- 
dow sill. It contained a few lumps of sugar, over 
which a mixture of whiskey and glycerine had been 



164 Ways of Wood Folk. 

poured. The sugar melted gradually in the sun, and 
a strong odor of alcohol rose from the sticky stuff. 
That and the sunshine must have roused my hornet 
guest, for when I came back to the room, there he lay 
by the tumbler, dead drunk. 

He was stretched out on his side, one wing doubled 
under him, a forward leg curled over his head, a 
sleepy, boozy, perfectly ludicrous expression on his 
pointed face. I poked him a bit with my finger, to 
see how the alcohol affected his temper. He rose 
unsteadily, staggered about, and knocked his head 
against the tumbler; at which fancied insult he raised 
his wings in a limp kind of dignity and defiance, buzz- 
ing a challenge. But he lost his legs, and fell down; 
and presently, in spite of pokings, went off into a 
drunken sleep again. 

All the afternoon he lay there. As it grew cooler 
he stirred about uneasily. At dusk he started up for 
his nest. It was a hard pull to get there. His head 
was heavy, and his legs shaky. Half way up, he 
stopped on top of the lower sash to lie down awhile. 
He had a terrible headache, evidently ; he kept rub- 
bing his head with his fore legs as if to relieve the 
pain. After a fall or two on the second sash, he 
reached the top, and tumbled into his warm nest to 
sleep off the effects of his spree. 

One such lesson should have been enough ; but it 



A Temperance Lesson for the Hornets. 1 65 

was n't. Perhaps, also, I should have put temptation 
out of his way ; for I knew that all hornets, especially 
yellow-jackets, are hopeless topers w T hen they get a 
chance ; that when a wasp discovers a fermenting 
apple, it is all up with his steady habits ; that when a 
nest of them discover a cider mill, all work, even the 
care of the young, is neglected. They take to drink- 
ing, and get utterly demoralized. But in the interest 
of a new experiment I forgot true kindness, and left 
the tumbler where it was. 

The next day, at noon, he was stretched out on the 
sill, drunk again. For three days he kept up his 
tippling, coming out when the sun shone warmly, and 
going straight to the fatal tumbler. On the fourth 
day he paid the penalty of his intemperance. 

The morning was very bright, and the janitor had 
left the hornet's window slightly open. At noon he 
was lying on the window sill, drunk as usual. I was 
in a hurry to take a train, and neglected to close the 
window. Late at night, when I came back to my 
room, he was gone. He was not on the sill, nor on 
the floor, nor under the window cushions. His nest 
in the casing, where I had so often watched him 
asleep, was empty. Taking a candle, I went out to 
search under the window. There I found him in the 
snow, his legs curled up close to his body, frozen stiff 
with the drip of the eaves. 



1 66 Ways of Wood Folk. 

I carried him in and warmed him at the fire, but 
it was too late. He had been drunk once too often. 
When I saw that he was dead, I stowed him away in 
the nest he had been seeking when he fell out into 
the snow. I tried to read ; but the book seemed dull. 
Every little while I got up to look at him, lying there 
with his little pointed face, still dead. At last I 
wrapped him up, and pushed him farther in, out of 
sight. 

All the while the empty tumbler seemed to look 
at me reproachfully from the window sill. 



XIII. SNOWY VISITORS. 



VER my table, as I write, is a 
big snowy owl whose yel- 
low eyes seem to be always 
watching me, whatever I 
do. Perhaps he is still 
wondering at the curious 
way in which I shot him. 
One stormy afternoon, 
a few winters ago, I was 
black-duck shooting at 
sundown, by a lonely salt 
creek that doubled across 
the marshes from Mad- 
daket Harbor. In the shadow of a low ridge I had 
built my blind among some bushes, near the freshest 
water. In front of me a solitary decoy was splashing 
about in joyous freedom after having been confined 
all day, quacking loudly at the loneliness of the place 
and at being separated from her mate. Beside me, 
crouched in the blind, my old dog Don was trying 

his best to shiver himself warm without disturbing 

167 




1 68 Ways of Wood Folk. 

the bushes too much. That would have frightened 
the incoming ducks, as Don knew very well. 

It grew dark and bitterly cold. No birds were fly- 
ing, and I had stood up a moment to let the blood 
down into half-frozen toes, when a shadow seerned to 
pass over my head. The next moment there was a 
splash, followed by loud quacks of alarm from the 
decoy. All I could make out, in the obscurity under 
the ridge, was a flutter of wings that rose heavily from 
the water, taking my duck with them. Only the 
anchor string prevented the marauder from getting 
away with his booty. Not wishing to shoot, for 
the decoy was a valuable one, I shouted vigorously, 
and sent out the dog. The decoy dropped with a 
splash, and in the darkness the thief got away — just 
vanished, like a shadow, without a sound. 

Poor ducky died in my hands a few moments later, 
the marks of sharp claws telling me plainly that the 
thief was an owl, though I had no suspicion then 
that it was the rare winter visitor from the north. I 
supposed, of course, that it was only a great-horned- 
owl, and so laid plans to get him. 

Next night I was at the same spot with a good 
duck call, and some wooden decoys, over which the 
skins of wild ducks had been carefully stretched. An 
hour after dark he came again, attracted, no doubt, 
by the continued quacking. I had another swift 



Snowy Visitors. 169 

glimpse of what seemed only a shadow ; saw it poise 
and shoot downward before I could find it with my 
gun sight, striking the decoys with a great splash and 
clatter. Before he discovered his mistake or could get 
started again, I had him. The next moment Don 
came ashore, proud as a peacock, bringing a great 
snowy owl with him — a rare prize, worth ten times 
the trouble we had taken to get it. 

Owls are generally very lean and muscular ; so 
much so, in severe winters, that they are often unable 
to fly straight when the wind blows ; and a twenty- 
knot breeze catches their broad wings and tosses 
them about helplessly. This one, however, was fat 
as a plover. When I stuffed him, I found that he 
had just eaten a big rat and a meadow-lark, hair, 
bones, feathers and all. It would be interesting to 
know what he intended to do with the duck. Per- 
haps, like the crow, he has snug hiding places here 
and there, where he keeps things against a time of 
need. 

Every severe winter a few of these beautiful owls 
find their way to the lonely places of the New Eng- 
land coast, driven southward, no doubt, by lack of 
food in the frozen north. Here in Massachusetts 
they seem to prefer the southern shores of Cape Cod, 
and especially the island of Nantucket, where besides 
the food cast up by the tides, there are larks and 



170 Ways of Wood Folk. 

blackbirds and robins, which linger more or less all 
winter. At home in the far north, the owls feed 
largely upon hares and grouse ; here nothing comes 
amiss, from a stray cat, roving too far from the house, 
to stray mussels on the beach that have escaped the 
sharp eyes of sea-gulls. 

Some of his hunting ways are most curious. One 
winter day, in prowling along the beach, I approached 
the spot where a day or two before I had been shoot- 
ing whistlers (golden-eye ducks) over decoys. The 
blind had been made by digging a hole in the 
sand. In the bottom was an armful of dry seaweed, 
to keep one's toes warm, and just behind the stand 
was the stump of a ship's mainmast, the relic of some 
old storm and shipwreck, cast up by the tide. 

A commotion of some kind was going on in the 
blind as Idrew near. Sand and bunches of seaweed 
were hurled up at intervals to be swept aside by the 
wind. Instantly I dropped out of sight into the dead 
beach grass to watch and listen. Soon a white head 
and neck bristled up from behind the old mast, every 
feather standing straight out ferociously. The head 
was perfectly silent a moment, listening ; then it 
twisted completely round twice so as to look in every 
direction. A moment later it had disappeared, and 
the seaweed was flying again. 

There was a prize in the old blind evidently. But 



Snowy Visitors. I y I 

what was he doing there ? Till then I had supposed 
that the owl always takes his game from the wing. 
Farther along the beach was a sand bluff overlooking 
the proceedings. I gained it after a careful stalk, 
crept to the edge, and looked over. Down in the blind 
a big snowy owl was digging away like a Trojan, tear- 
ing out sand and seaweed with his great claws, first 
one foot, then the other, like a hungry hen, and send- 
ing it up in showers behind him over the old mast. 
Every few moments he would stop suddenly, bristle 
up all his feathers till he looked comically big and 
fierce, take a look out over the log and along the 
beach, then fall to digging again furiously. 

I suppose that the object of this bristling up before 
each observation was to strike terror into the heart of 
any enemy that might be approaching to surprise him 
at his unusual work. It is an owl trick. Wounded 
birds always use it when approached. 

And the object of the digging ? That was perfectly 
evident. A beach rat had jumped down into the blind, 
after some fragments of lunch, undoubtedly, and being 
unable to climb out, had started to tunnel up to the 
surface. The owl heard him at work, and started a 
stern chase. He won, too, for right in the midst of a 
fury of seaweed he shot up with the rat in his claws 
— so suddenly that he almost escaped me. Had it 
not been for the storm and his underground digging, . 



172 Ways of Wood Folk. 

he surely would have heard me long before I could 
get near enough to see what he was doing ; for his 
eyes and ears are wonderfully keen. 

In his southern visits, or perhaps on the ice fields 
of the Arctic ocean, he has discovered a more novel 
way of procuring his food than digging for it. He 
has turned fisherman and learned to fish. Once only 
have I seen him get his dinner in this way. It was 
on the north shore of Nantucket, one day in the win- 
ter of 1890-91, when the remarkable flight of white 
owls came down from the north. The chord of the 
bay was full of floating ice, and swimming about the 
shoals were thousands of coots. While watching 
the latter through my field-glass, I noticed a snowy 
owl standing up still and straight on the edge of a 
bio- ice cake. " Now what is that fellow doing; there ? " 
I thought. — "I know! He is trying to drift down 
close to that flock of coots before they see him." 

That was interesting ; so I sat down on a rock to 
watch. Whenever I took my eyes from him a moment, 
it was difficult to find him again, so perfectly did his 
plumage blend with the white ice upon which he stood 
motionless. 

But he was not after the coots. I saw him lean 
forward suddenly and plunge a foot into the water. 
Then, when he hopped back from the edge, and 
appeared to be eating something, it dawned upon me 



Snowy Visitors. 1 73 

that he was fishing — and fishing like a true sports- 
man, out on the ice alone, with only his own skill to 
depend upon. In a few minutes he struck again, and 
this time rose with a fine fish, which he carried to the 
shore to devour at leisure. 

For a long time that fish was to me the most puz- 
zling thing in the whole incident ; for at that season 
no fish are to be found, except in deep water off shore. 
Some weeks later I learned that, just previous to the 
incident, several fishermen's dories, with full fares, had 
been upset on the east side of the island when trying 
to land through a heavy surf. The dead fish had 
been carried around by the tides, and the owl had 
been deceived into showing his method of fishing. 
Undoubtedly, in his northern home, when the ice 
breaks up and the salmon are running, he goes fish- 
ing from an ice cake as a regular occupation. 

The owl lit upon a knoll, not two hundred yards 
from where I sat motionless, and gave me a good 
opportunity of watching him at his meal. He treated 
the fish exactly as he would have treated a rat or duck : 
stood on it with one foot, gripped the long claws of 
the other through it, and tore it to pieces savagely, as 
one would a bit of paper. The beak was not used, 
except to receive the pieces, which were conveyed up 
to it by his foot, as a parrot eats. He devoured every- 
thing — fins, tail, skin, head, and most of the bones r 



174 Ways of Wood Folk, 

in great hungry mouthfuls. Then he hopped to the 
top of the knoll, sat up straight, puffed out his feath- 
ers to look big, and went to sleep. But with the first 
slight movement I made to creep nearer, he was wide 
awake and flew to a higher point. Such hearing is 
simply marvelous. 

The stomach of an owl is peculiar, there being no 
intermediate crop, as in other birds. Every part of 
his prey small enough (and the mouth and throat of 
an owl are large out of all proportion) is greedily swal- 
lowed. Long after the flesh is digested, feathers, fur, 
and bones remain in the stomach, softened by acids, 
till everything is absorbed that can afford nourish- 
ment, even to the quill shafts, and the ends and marrow 
of bones. The dry remains are then rolled into large 
pellets by the stomach, and disgorged. 

This, by the way, suggests the best method of find- 
ing an owl's haunts. It is to search, not overhead, 
but on the ground under large trees, till a pile of these 
little balls, of dry feathers and hair and bones, reveals 
the nest or roosting place above. 

It seems rather remarkable that my fisherman-owl 
did not make a try at the coots that were so plenty 
about him. Rarely, I think, does he attempt to strike 
a bird of any kind in the daytime. His long training 
at the north, where the days are several months long, 
has adapted his eyes to seeing perfectly, both in sun- 



Snowy Visitors. 1 75 

shine and in darkness ; and with us he spends the 
greater part of each day hunting along the beaches. 
The birds at such times are never molested. He 
seems to know that he is not good at dodging ; that 
they are all quicker than he, and are not to be caught 
napping. And the birds, even the little birds, have 
no fear of him in the sunshine ; though they shiver 
themselves to sleep when they think of him at night. 

I have seen the snowbirds twittering contentedly 
near him. Once I saw him fly out to sea in the midst 
of a score of gulls, which paid no attention to him. At 
another time I saw him fly over a large flock of wild 
ducks that were preening themselves in the grass. 
He kept straight on ; and the ducks, so far as I could 
see, merely stopped their toilet for an instant, and 
turned up one eye so as to see him better. Had it 
been dusk, the whole flock would have shot up into 
the air at the first startled quack — all but one, which 
would have stayed with the owl. 

His favorite time for hunting is the hour after dusk, 
or just before daylight, when the birds are restless on 
the roost. No bird is safe from him then. The fierce 
eyes search through every tree and bush and bunch 
of grass. The keen ears detect every faintest chirp, 
or rustle, or scratching of tiny claws on the roost. 
Nothing that can be called a sound escapes them. 
The broad, soft wings tell no tale of his presence, and 



176 Ways of Wood Folk, 

his swoop is swift and sure. He utters no sound. 
Like a good Nimrod he hunts silently. 

The flight of an owl, noiseless as the sweep of a 
cloud shadow, is the most remarkable thing about 
him. The wings are remarkably adapted to the silent 
movement that is essential to surprising birds at dusk. 
The feathers are long and soft. The laminae extend- 
ing from the wing quills, instead of ending in the 
sharp feather edge of other birds, are all drawn out to 
fine hair points, through which the air can make no 
sound as it rushes in the swift wing-beats. The whish 
of a duck's wings can be heard two or three hundred 
yards on a still night. The wings of an eagle rustle 
like silk in the wind as he mounts upward. A sparrow's 
wings flutter or whir as he changes his flight. Every 
one knows the startled rush of a quail or grouse. But 
no ear ever heard the passing of a great owl, spread- 
ing his five-foot wings in rapid flight. 

He knows well, however, when to vary his program. 
Once I saw him hovering at dusk over some wild 
land covered with bushes and dead grass, a favorite 
winter haunt of meadow-larks. His manner showed 
that he knew his game was near. He kept hovering 
over a certain spot, swinging off noiselessly to right 
or left, only to return again. Suddenly he struck his 
wings twice over his head with a loud flap, and 
swooped instantly. It was a clever trick. The bird 



Snowy Visitors. 177 

beneath had been waked by the sound, or startled 
into turning his head. With the first movement the 
owl had him. 

All owls have the habit of sitting still upon some 
high point which harmonizes with the general color 
of their feathers, and swooping upon any sound or 
movement that indicates game. The long-eared, or 
eagle-owl invariably selects a dark colored stub, on 
top of which he appears as a part of the tree itself, 
and is seldom noticed ; while the snowy owl, whose 
general color is soft gray, will search out a birch or 
a lightning-blasted stump, and sitting up still and 
straight, so hide himself in plain sight that it takes 
a good eye to find him. 

The swooping habit leads them into queer mistakes 
sometimes. Two or three times, when sitting or 
lying still in the woods watching for birds, my head 
has been mistaken for a rat or squirrel, or some 
other furry quadruped, by owls, which swooped and 
brushed me with their wings, and once left the marks 
of their claws, before discovering their mistake. 

Should any boy reader ever have the good fortune 
to discover one of these rare birds some winter day 
in tramping along the beaches, and wish to secure 
him as a specimen, let him not count on the old idea 
that an owl cannot see in the daytime. On the con- 
trary, let him proceed exactly as he would in stalking 



178 Ways of Wood Folk. 

a deer : get out of sight, and to leeward, if possible ; 
then take every advantage of bush and rock and 
beach-grass to creep within range, taking care to 
advance only when his eyes are turned away, and 
remembering that his ears are keen enough to de- 
tect the passing of a mouse in the grass from an 
incredible distance. 

Sometimes the crows find one of these snowy visi- 
tors on the beach, and make a great fuss and racket, 
as they always do when an owl is in sight. At such 
times he takes his stand under a bank, or in the lee 
of a rock, where the crows cannot trouble him from 
behind, and sits watching them fiercely. Woe be to 
the one that ventures too near. A plunge, a grip of 
his claw, a weak caw, and it s all over. That seems 
to double the crows' frenzy — and that is the one 
moment when you can approach rapidly from behind. 
But you must drop flat when the crows perceive you ; 
for the owl is sure to take a look around for the cause 
of their sudden alarm. If he sees nothing suspicious 
he will return to his shelter to eat his crow, or just to 
rest his sensitive ears after all the pother. A quarter- 
mile away the crows sit silent, watching you and him. 

And now a curious thing happens. The crows, 
that a moment ago were clamoring angrily about 
their enemy, watch with a kind of intense interest as 
you creep towards him. Half way to the rock behind 



Snowy Visitors. ijg 

which he is hiding, they guess your purpose, and a 
low rapid chatter begins among them. One would 
think that they would exult in seeing him surprised 
and killed ; but that is not crow nature. They would 
gladly worry the owl to death if they could, but they 
will not stand by and see' him slain by a common 
enemy. The chatter ceases suddenly. Two or three 
swift fliers leave the flock, circle around you, and 
speed over the rock, uttering short notes of alarm. 
With the first sharp note, which all birds seem to 
understand, the owl springs into the air, turns, sees 
you, and is off up the beach. The crows rush after 
him with crazy clamor, and speedily drive him to 
cover again. But spare yourself more trouble. It 
is useless to try stalking any game while the crows 
are watching. 

Sometimes you can drive or ride quite near to one 
of these birds, the horse apparently removing all his 
suspicion. But if you are on foot, take plenty of 
time and care and patience, and shoot your prize on 
the first stalk if possible. Once alarmed, he will lead 
you a long chase, and most likely escape in the end. 

I learned the wisdom of this advice in connection 
w r ith the first snowy owl I had ever met outside a 
museum. I surprised him early one winter morning 
eating a brant, which he had caught asleep on the 
shore. He saw me, and kept making short flights 



180 . Ways of Wood Folk. 

from point to point in a great circle — ■ five miles, per- 
haps, and always in the open — evidently loath to 
abandon his feast to the crows ; while I followed with 
growing wonder and respect, trying every device of 
the still hunter to creep within range. That was the 
same owl which I last saw at dusk, flying straight out 
to sea among the gulls. 




XIV. 

PHE Christmas carol, sung by a chorus of fresh 
-*- children's voices, is perhaps the most perfect 
expression of the spirit of Christmastide. Especially 
is this true of the old English and German carols, 
which seem to grow only sweeter, more mellow, more 
perfectly expressive of the love and good-will that 
inspired them, as the years go by. Yet always at 
Christmas time there is with me the memory of one 
carol sweeter than all, which was sung to me alone 
by a little minstrel from the far north, with the wind 
in the pines humming a soft accompaniment. 



Doubtless many readers have sometimes seen in 
winter flocks of stranger birds — fluffy gray visitors, 
almost as large as a robin — flying about the lawns 
with soft whistling calls, or feeding on the ground, so 
tame and fearless that they barely move aside as you 

181 



1 82 Ways of Wood Folk. 

approach. The beak is short and thick ; the back of 
the head and a large patch just above the tail are gol- 
den brown; and across the wings are narrow double 
bars of white. All the rest is soft gray, dark above and 
light beneath. If you watch them on the ground, you 
will see that they have a curious way of moving about, 
like a golden-winged woodpecker in the same position. 
Sometimes they put one foot before the other, in a 
funny little attempt at a dignified walk, like the black- 
birds; again they hop like a robin, but much more 
awkwardly, as if they were not accustomed to walking, 
and did not quite know how to use their feet — which 
is quite true. 

The birds are pine-grosbeaks, and are somewhat 
irregular winter visitors from the far north. Only 
when the cold is most severe, and the snow lies deep 
about Hudson Bay, do they leave their nesting places 
to spend a few weeks in bleak New England as a win- 
ter resort. Their stay with us is short and uncertain. 
Long ere the first bluebird has whistled to us from 
the old fence rail that, if we please, spring is coming, 
the grosbeaks are whistling of spring, and singing 
their love songs in the forests of Labrador. 

A curious thing about the flocks we see in winter 
is that they are composed almost entirely of females. 
The male bird is very rare with us. You can tell 
him instantly by his brighter color and his beautiful 



A Christmas Carol. 183 

crimson breast. Sometimes the flocks contain a few 
young males, but until the first mating season has 
tipped their breast feathers with deep crimson they 
are almost indistinguishable from their sober colored 
companions. 

This crimson breast shield, by the way, is the family 
mark or coat of arms of the grosbeaks, just as the scar- 
let crest marks all the woodpeckers. And if you ask a 
Micmac, deep in the woods, how the grosbeak got his 
shield, he may tell you a story that will interest you 
as did the legend of Hiawatha and the woodpecker 
in your childhood days. 

If the old male, with his proud crimson, be rare with 
us, his beautiful song is still more so. Only in the 
deep forests, by the lonely rivers of the far north, where 
no human ear ever hears, does he greet the sunrise 
from the top of some lofty spruce. There also he pours 
into the ears of his sober little gray wife the sweetest 
love song of the birds. It is a flood of soft warbling 
notes, tinkling like a brook deep under the ice, tum- 
bling over each other in a quiet ecstasy of harmony ; 
mellow as the song of the hermit-thrush, but much 
softer, as if he feared lest any should hear but her to 
whom he sang. Those who know the music of the 
rose-breasted grosbeak (not his robin-like song of 
spring, but the exquisitely soft warble to his brood- 
ing mate) may multiply its sweetness indefinitely, 



184 Ways of Wood Folk. 

and so form an idea of what the pine-grosbeak's 
song is like. 

But sometimes he forgets himself in his winter 
visit, and sings as other birds do, just because his 
world is bright ; and then, once in a lifetime, a New 
England bird lover hears him, and remembers ; and 
regrets for the rest of his life that the grosbeak's 
northern country life has made him so shy a visitor. 

One Christmas morning, a few years ago, the new- 
fallen snow lay white and pure over all the woods and 
fields. It was soft and clinging as it fell on Christ- 
mas eve. Now every old wall and fence was a carved 
bench of gleaming white ; every post and stub had a 
soft white robe and a tall white hat ; and every little 
bush and thicket was a perfect fairyland of white 
arches and glistening columns, and dark grottoes 
walled about with delicate frostwork of silver and 
jewels. And then the glory, dazzling beyond all words, 
when the sun rose and shone upon it ! 

Before sunrise I was out. Soon the jumping flight 
and cheery good-morning of a downy woodpecker led 
me to an old field with scattered evergreen clumps. 
There is no better time for a quiet peep at the birds 
than the morning after a snow-storm, and no better 
place than the evergreens. If you can find them at 
all (which is not certain, for they have mysterious 



A Christmas Carol. 185 

ways of disappearing before a storm), you will find 
them unusually quiet, and willing to bear your scrutiny 
indifferently, instead of flying off into deeper coverts. 
I had scarcely crossed the wall w r hen I stopped at 
hearing a new bird song, so amazingly sweet that it 
could only be a Christmas message, yet so out of 
place that the listener stood doubting whether his 
ears were playing him false, wondering whether the 
music or the landscape would not suddenly vanish as 
an unreal thing. The song was continuous — a soft 
melodious warble, full of sweetness and suggestion ; 
but suggestion of June meadows and a summer sun- 
rise, rather than of snow-packed evergreens and 
Christmastide. To add to the unreality, no ear could 
tell where the song came from ; its own muffled 
quality disguised the source perfectly. I searched the 
trees in front ; there w r as no bird there. I looked 
behind ; there was no place for a bird to sing. I 
remembered the redstart, how he calls sometimes 
from among the rocks, and refuses to show himself, 
and runs and hides when you look for him. I 
searched the wall; but not a bird track marked the 
snow. All the while the wonderful carol went on, 
now in the air, now close beside me, growing more 
and more bewildering as I listened. It took me a 
good half-hour to locate the sound; then I under- 
stood. 



1 86 Ways of Wood Folk, 

Near me was a solitary fir tree with a bushy top. 
The bird, whoever he was, had gone to sleep up there, 
close against the trunk, as. birds do, for protection. 
During the night the soft snow gathered thicker and 
thicker upon the flexible branches. Their tips bent 
with the weight till they touched the trunk below, 
forming a green bower, about which the snow packed 
all night long, till it was completely closed in. The 
bird was a prisoner inside, and singing as the morning 
sun shone in through the walls of his prison-house. 

As I listened, delighted with the carol and the 
minstrel's novel situation, a mass of snow, loosened 
by the sun, slid from the snow bower, and a pine- 
grosbeak appeared in the doorway. A moment he 
seemed to look about curiously over the new, white, 
beautiful world ; then he hopped to the topmost twig 
and, turning his crimson breast to the sunrise, poured 
out his morning song ; no longer muffled, but sweet 
and clear as a wood-thrush bell ringing the sunset. 

Once, long afterward, I heard his softer love song, 
and found his nest in the heart of a New Brunswick 
forest. Till then it was not known that he ever built 
south of Labrador. But even that, and the joy of dis- 
covery, lacked the charm of this rare sweet carol, 
coming all unsought and unexpected, as good things 
do, while our own birds were spending the Christmas 
time and singing the sunrise in Florida. 



XV. MOOWEEN THE BEAR. 



^ VER since nursery times 
^ Bruin has been largely 

a creature of imagina- 
— sj tion. He dwells there 
a ferocious beast, 
prowling about gloomy 
woods, red eyed and danger- 
ous, ready to rush upon the 
unwary traveler and eat him 
on the spot. 

Sometimes, indeed, we 
have seen him out of imagi- 
I nation. There he is a poor, 
tired, clumsy creature, foot- 
sore and dusty, with a halter 
round his neck, and a swarthy 
foreigner to make his life 
miserable. At the word he 
rises to his hind legs, hunches his shoulders, and lunges 
awkwardly round in a circle, while the foreigner sings 

Horry, horry, dum-dum, and his wife passes the hat. 

187 




1 88 Ways of Wood Folk. 

We children pity the bear, as we watch, and forget 
the other animal that frightens us when near the 
woods at night. But he passes on at last, with a 
troop of boys following to the town limits. Next day 
Bruin comes back, and lives in imagination as ugly 
and frightful as ever. 

But Mooween the Bear, as the northern Indians 
call him, the animal that lives up in the woods of 
Maine and Canada, is a very different kind of creature. 
He is big and glossy black, with long white teeth 
and sharp black claws, like the imagination bear. 
Unlike him, however, he is shy and wild, and timid as 
any rabbit. When you camp in the wilderness at 
night, the rabbit will come out of his form in the 
ferns to pull at your shoe, or nibble a hole in the salt 
bag, while you sleep. He will play twenty pranks 
under your very eyes. But if you would see Mooween, 
you must camp many summers, and tramp many a 
weary mile through the big forests before catching a 
glimpse of him, or seeing any trace save the deep 
tracks, like a barefoot boy's, left in some soft bit of 
earth in his hurried flight. 

Mooween's ears are quick, and his nose very keen. 
The slightest warning from either will generally send 
him off to the densest cover or the roughest hillside 
in the neighborhood. Silently as a black shadow he 
glides away, if he has detected your approach from a 



Moo ween the Bear. 189 

distance. But if surprised and frightened, he dashes 
headlong through the brush with crash of branches, 
and bump of fallen logs, and volleys of dirt and dead 
wood flung out behind him as he digs his toes into 
the hillside in his frantic haste to be away. 

In the first startled instant of such an encounter, 
one thinks there must be tw r enty bears scrambling up 
the hill. And if you should perchance get a glimpse 
of the game, you will be conscious chiefly of a funny 
little pair of wrinkled black feet, turned up at you so 
rapidly that they actually seem to twinkle through a 
cloud of flying loose stuff. 

That was the way in w 7 hich I first met Mooween. 
He was feeding peaceably on blueberries, just stuffing 
himself with the ripe fruit that tinged with blue a 
burned hillside, when I came round the turn of a deer 
path. There he was, the mighty, ferocious beast — 
and my only weapon a trout-rod ! 

We discovered each other at the same instant. 
Words can hardly measure the mutual consternation. 
I felt scared ; and in a moment it flashed upon me 
that he looked so. This last observation was like a 
breath of inspiration. It led me to make a demon- 
stration before he should regain his wits. I jumped 
forward with a flourish, and threw my hat at him. — 

Boo ! said I. 

Hoof, woof ! said Mooween. And away he went 



190 Ways of Wood Folk. 

up the hill in a desperate scramble, with loose stones 
rattling, and the bottoms of his feet showing con- 
stantly through the volley of dirt and chips flung out 
behind him. 

That killed the fierce imagination bear of childhood 
days deader than any bullet could have done, and 
convinced me that Mooween is at heart a timid crea- 
ture. Still, this was a young bear, as was also one 
other upon whom I tried the same experiment, with 
the same result. Had he been older and bigger, it 
might have been different. In that case I have found 
that a good rule is to go your own way unobtru- 
sively, leaving Mooween to his devices. All animals, 
whether wild or domestic, respect a man who neither 
fears nor disturbs them. 

Mooween's eyes are his weak point. They are 
close together, and seem to focus on the ground a few 7 
feet in front of his nose. At twenty yards to leeward 
he can never tell you from a stump or a caribou, 
should you chance to be standing still. 

If fortunate enough to find the ridge where he 
sleeps away the long summer days, one is almost sure 
to get a glimpse of him by watching on the lake 
below. It is necessary only to sit perfectly still in 
your canoe among the water-grasses near shore. 
When near a lake, a bear will almost invariably come 
down about noontime to sniff carefully all about, and 



Mooween the Bear. 191 

lap the water, and perhaps find a dead fish before 
going back for his afternoon sleep. 

Four or five times I have sat thus in my canoe 
while Mooween passed close by, and never suspected 
my presence till a chirp drew his attention. It is 
curious at such times, when there is no wind to bring 
the scent to his keen nose, to see him turn his head to 
one side, and wrinkle his forehead in the vain endeavor 
to make out the curious object there in the grass. At 
last he rises on his hind legs, and stares long and 
intently. It seems as if he must recognize you, with 
his nose pointing straight at you, his eyes looking 
straight into yours. But he drops on all fours again, 
and glides silently into the thick bushes that fringe 
the shore. 

Don't stir now, nor make the least sound. He 
is in there, just out of sight, sitting on his haunches, 
using nose and ears to catch your slightest message. 

Ten minutes pass by in intense silence. Down on 
the shore, fifty yards below, a slight swaying of the 
bilberry bushes catches your eye. That surely is not 
the bear! There has not been a sound since he dis- 
appeared. A squirrel could hardly creep through that 
underbrush without noise enough to tell w T here he 
was. But the bushes sway again, and Mooween reap- 
pears suddenly for another long look at the suspicious 
object. Then he turns and plods his way along 



192 Ways of Wood Folk. 

shore, rolling his head from side to side as if com- 
pletely mystified. 

Now swing your canoe well out into the lake, and 
head him off on the point, a quarter of a mile below. 
Hold the canoe quiet just outside the lily pads by 
grasping a few tough stems, and sit low. This time 
the big object catches Mooween's eye as he rounds 
the point; and you have only to- sit still to see him 
go through the same maneuvers with greater mysti- 
fication than before. 

Once, however, he varied his program, and gave 
me a terrible start, letting me know for a moment 
just how it feels to be hunted, at the same time 
showing with what marvelous stillness he can glide 
through the thickest cover when he chooses. 

It was early evening on a forest lake. The water 
lay like a great mirror, with the sunset splendor still 
upon it. The hush of twilight was over the wilder- 
ness. Only the hermit-thrushes sang wild and sweet 
from a hundred dead spruce tops. 

I was drifting about, partly in the hope to meet 
Moow 7 een, whose tracks were very numerous at the 
lower end of the lake, when I heard him walking in 
the shallow water. Through the glass I made him 
out against the shore, as he plodded along in my 
direction. 

I had long been curious to know how near a bear 



Mooween the Bear. 193 

would come to a man without discovering him. Here 
was an opportunity. The wind at sunset had been 
in my favor ; now there was not the faintest breath 
stirring. 

Hiding the canoe, I sat down in the sand on a 
little point, where dense bushes grew down to within 
a few feet of the water's edge. Head and shoulders 
were in plain sight above the water-grass. My inten- 
tions were wholly peaceable, notwithstanding the rifle 
that lay across my knees. It was near the mating 
season, when Mooween's temper is often dangerous ; 
and one felt much more comfortable with the chill of 
the cold iron in his hands. 

Mooween came rapidly along the shore meanwhile, 
evidently anxious to reach the other end of the lake. 
In the mating season bears use the margins of lakes 
and streams as natural highways. As he drew nearer 
and nearer I gazed with a kind of fascination at the 
big unconscious brute. He carried his head low, and 
dropped his feet with a heavy splash into the shallow 
water. 

At twenty yards he stopped as if struck, with head 
up and one paw lifted, sniffing suspiciously. Even 
then he did not see me, though only the open shore 
lay between us. He did not use his eyes at all, but 
laid his great head back on his shoulders and sniffed 
in every direction, rocking his brown muzzle up and 



194 Ways of Wood Folk. 

down the while, so as to take in every atom from 
the tainted air. 

A few slow careful steps forward, and he stopped 
again, looked straight into my eyes, then beyond me 
towards the lake, all the while sniffing. I was still 
only part of the shore. Yet he was so near that I 
caught the gleam of his eyes, and saw the nostrils 
swell and the muzzle twitch nervously. 

Another step or two, and he planted his fore feet 
firmly. The long hairs began to rise along his spine, 
and under his wrinkled chops was a flash of white 
teeth. Still he had no suspicion of the motionless 
object there in the grass. He looked rather out on 
the lake. Then he glided into the brush and was 
lost to sight and hearing. 

He was so close that I scarcely dared breathe as I 
waited, expecting him to come out farther down the 
shore. Five minutes passed without the slightest 
sound to indicate his whereabouts, though I was 
listening intently in the dead hush that was on the 
lake. All the while I smelled him strongly. One 
can smell a bear almost as far as he can a deer, though 
the scent does not cling so long to the underbrush. 

A bush swayed slightly below where he had dis- 
appeared. I was watching it closely when some 
sudden warning — I know not what, for I did not 
hear but only felt it — made me turn my head quickly. 



Mooween the Bear. 195 

There, not six feet away, a huge head and shoulders 
were thrust out of the bushes on the bank, and a pair 
of gleaming eyes were peering intently down upon 
me in the grass. He had been watching me at arm's 
length probably two or three minutes. Had a muscle 
moved in all that time, I have no doubt that he would 
have sprung upon me. As it was, who can say what 
was passing behind that curious, half-puzzled, half- 
savage gleam in his eyes? 

He drew quickly back as a sudden movement on 
my part threw the rifle into position. A few minutes 
later I heard the snap of a rotten twig some distance 
away. Not another sound told of his presence till he 
broke out onto the shore, fifty yards above, and went 
steadily on his way up the lake. 

Moow r een is something of a humorist in his own 
way. When not hungry he will go out of his way to 
frighten a bullfrog away from his sun-bath on the 
shore, for no other purpose, evidently, than just to see 
him jump. Watching him thus amusing himself one 
afternoon, I was immensely entertained by seeing him 
turn his head to one side, and wrinkle his eyebrows, 
as each successive frog said kedunk, and went splash- 
ing away over the lily pads. 

A pair of cubs are playful as young foxes, while 
their extreme awkwardness makes them a dozen times 



ig6 Ways of Wood Folk. 

more comical. Simmo, my Indian guide, tells me that 
the cubs will sometimes run away and hide when 
they hear the mother bear returning. No amount of 
coaxing or of anxious fear on her part will bring them 
back, till she searches diligently to find them. 

Once only have I had opportunity to see the young 
at play. There were two of them, nearly full-grown, 
with the mother. The most curious thing was to see 
them stand up on their hind legs and cuff each other 
soundly, striking and warding like trained boxers. 
Then they would lock arms and wrestle desperately 
till one was thrown, when the other promptly seized 
him by throat or paw, and pretended to growl fright- 
fully. ' 

They were well fed, evidently, and full of good 
spirits as two boys. But the mother was cross and 
out of sorts. She kept moving about uneasily, as if 
the rough play irritated her nerves. Occasionally, as 
she sat for a moment with hind legs stretched out 
flat and fore paws planted between them, one of the 
cubs would approach and attempt some monkey play. 
A sound cuff on the ear invariably sent him whimper- 
ing back to his companion, who looked droll enough 
the while, sitting with his tongue out and his head 
wagging humorously as he watched the experiment. 
It was getting toward the time of year when she 
would mate again, and send them off into the world 



Mooween the Bear. 



197 



to shift for themselves. And this was perhaps their 
first hard discipline. 

Once also I caught an old bear enjoying himself 
in a curious way. It was one intensely hot day, in 
the heart of a New Brunswick wilderness. Mooween 
came out onto the lake shore and lumbered along, 
twisting uneasily and rolling his head as if very much 
distressed by the heat. I followed silently close behind 
in my canoe. 

Soon he came to a cool spot under the alders, 
which was probably what he was looking for. A 
small brook made an eddy there, and a lot of drift- 
weed had collected over a bed of soft black mud. 
The stump of a huge cedar leaned out over it, some 
four or five feet above the water. 

First he waded in to try the temperature. Then 
he came out and climbed the cedar stump, where he 
sniffed in every direction, as is his wont before lying 
down. Satisfied at last, he balanced himself carefully 
and gave a big jump — Oh, so aw r kwardly ! — with legs 
out flat, and paws up, and mouth open as if he were 
laughing at himself. Down he came, souse, with a 
tremendous splash that sent mud and w T ater flying in 
every direction. And with a deep uff-guff of pure 
delight, he settled himself in his cool bed for a com- 
fortable nap. 

In his fondness for fish, Mooween has discovered an 



198 Ways of Wood Folk. 

interesting way of catching them. In June and July 
immense numbers of trout and salmon run up the 
wilderness rivers on their way to the spawning 
grounds. Here and there, on small streams, are 
shallow riffles, w r here large fish are often half out of 
water as they struggle up. On one of these riffles 
Mooween stations himself during the first bright 
moonlight nights of June, when the run of fish is 
largest on account of the higher tides at the river 
mouth. And Mooween knows, as well as any other 
fisherman, the kind of night on which to go fishing. 
He knows also the virtue of keeping still. As a big 
salmon struggles by, Mooween slips a paw under him, 
tosses him to the shore by a dexterous flip, and springs 
after him before he can flounder back. 

When hungry, Mooween has as many devices as a 
fox for getting a meal. He tries flipping frogs from 
among the lily pads in the same way that he catches 
salmon. That failing, he takes to creeping through 
the water-grass, like a mink, and striking his game 
dead with a blow of his paw. 

Or he finds a porcupine loafing through the woods, 
and follows him about to throw dirt and stones at 
him, carefully refraining from touching him the while, 
till the porcupine rolls himself into a ball of bristling 
quills, — his usual method of defense. Mooween 
slips a paw under him, flips him against a tree to stun 



Mooween the Bear. 199 

him, and bites him in the belly, where there are no 
quills. If he spies the porcupine in a tree, he will 
climb up, if he is a young bear, and try to shake him 
off. But he soon learns better, and saves his strength 
for more fruitful exertions. 

Mooween goes to the lumber camps regularly after 
his winter sleep and, breaking in through door or 
roof, helps himself to what he finds. If there happens 
to be a barrel of pork there, he will roll it into the 
open air, if the door is wide enough, before breaking 
in the head with a blow of his paw. 

Should he find a barrel of molasses among the 
stores, his joy is unbounded. The head is broken in 
on the instant and Mooween eats till he is surfeited. 
Then he lies down and rolls in the sticky sweet, to 
prolong the pleasure ; and stays in the neighborhood 
till every drop has been lapped up. 

Lumbermen have long since learned of his strength 
and cunning in breaking into their strong camps. 
When valuable stores are left in the woods, they are 
put into special camps, called bear camps, where doors 
and roofs are fastened with chains and ingenious log 
locks to keep Mooween out. 

Near the settlements Mooween speedily locates the 
sweet apple trees among the orchards. These he 
climbs by night, and shakes off enough apples to last 
him for several visits. Every kind of domestic animal 



200 Ways of Wood Folk. 

is game for him. He will lie at the edge of a clearing 
for hours, with the patience of a cat, waiting for turkey 
or sheep or pig to come within range of his swift rush. 

His fondness for honey is well known. When he 
has discovered a rotten tree in which wild bees have 
hidden their store, he will claw at the bottom till it 
falls. Curling one paw under the log he sinks the 
claw r s deep into the wood. The other paw grips the 
log opposite the first, and a single wrench lays it open. 
The clouds of angry insects about his head meanwhile 
are as little regarded as so many flies. He knows the 
thickness of his skin, and they know it. When the 
honey is at last exposed, and begins to disappear in 
great hungry mouthfuls, the bees also fall upon it, to 
gorge themselves with the fruit of their hard labor 
before Mooween shall have eaten it all. 

Everything eatable in the woods ministers at times 
to Mooween's need. Nuts and berries are favorite 
dishes in their season. When these and other delica- 
cies fail, he knows where to dig for edible roots. A 
big caribou, wandering near his hiding place, is pulled 
down and stunned by a blow on the head. Then, 
when the meat has lost its freshness, he will hunt for 
an hour after a wood-mouse he has seen run under a 
stone, or pull a rotten log to pieces for the ants and 
larvae concealed within. 

These last are favorite dishes with him. In a 



Mooween the Bear. 201 

burned district, where ants and berries abound, one is 
continually finding charred logs, in which the ants 
nest by thousands, split open from end to end. A 
few strong claw marks, and the lick of a moist tongue 
here and there, explain the matter. It shows the 
extremes of Mooween's taste. Next to honey he 
prefers red ants, which are sour as pickles. 

Mooween is even more expert as a boxer than as a 
fisherman. When the skin is stripped from his fore 
arms, they are seen to be of great size, with muscles 
as firm to the touch as so much rubber. Long prac- 
tice has made him immensely strong, and quick as a 
flash to ward and strike. Woe be to the luckless dog, 
however large, that ventures in the excitement of the 
hunt within reach of his paw. A single swift stroke 
will generally put the poor brute out of the hunt 
forever. 

Once Simmo caught a bear by the hind leg in a 
steel trap. It was a young bear, a two-year-old ; and 
Simmo thought to save his precious powder by killing 
it with a club. He cut a heavy maple stick and, 
swinging it high above his head, advanced to the trap. 
Mooween rose to his hind legs, and looked him steadily 
in the eye, like the trained boxer that he is. Down 
came the club with a sweep to have felled an ox. 
There was a flash from Mooween's paw; the club 
spun away into the woods; and Simmo just escaped 



202 Ways of Wood Folk. 

a fearful return blow by dropping to the ground and 
rolling out of reach, leaving his cap in Mooween's 
claws. A wink later, and his scalp would have hung 
there instead. 

In the mating season Mooween has one curious 
habit, which is a kind of challenge. When a single 
bear is following a female about, he will sometimes 
stop beside a fir or spruce, to throw down his glove, as 
it were. Rising on his hind legs, he tears the bark 
with his claws as high as he can reach on either side. 
Then placing his back against the trunk, he turns his 
head and bites into the tree with his long canine teeth, 
tearing out a mouthful of the wood. That is to let 
all rivals know just how big a bear he is. 

The next male that comes along, on the trail of the 
same female, sees the challenge and measures his 
height and reach in the same way, against the same 
tree. If he can bite as high, or higher, he keeps on, 
and a terrible fight is sure to follow. But if, with his 
best endeavors, his marks fall short of the deep scars 
above, he prudently withdraws, and leaves it to a 
bigger bear to risk an encounter. 

In the wilderness one occasionally finds a tree on 
which three or four bears have thus left their chal- 
lenge. Sometimes all the bears in a neighborhood 
seem to have left their records in the same place. I 
remember well one such tree, a big fir, by a lonely 



Moo ween the Bear. 203 



little beaver pond, where the separate challenges had 
become indistinguishable on the torn bark. The 
freshest marks here were those of a long-limbed old 
ranger — a monster he must have been — with a clear 
reach of a foot above his nearest rival. Evidently no 
other bear had cared to try after such a record. 

Once, in the mating season, I discovered quite by 
accident that Mooween can be called, like a hawk or 
a moose, or indeed any other wild creature, if one 
but knows how. It was in New Brunswick, where I 
was camped on a wild forest river. At midnight I was 
back at a little opening in the woods, watching some 
hares at play in the bright moonlight. When they 
had run away, I called a wood-mouse out from his den 
under a stump ; and then a big brown owl from across 
the river — which almost scared the life out of my poor 
little wood-mouse. Suddenly a strange cry sounded 
far back on the mountain. I listened curiously, then 
imitated the cry, in the hope of hearing it again and 
of remembering it ; for I had never before heard any- 
thing like the sound, and had no idea what creature 
produced it. There was no response, however, and I 
speedily grew interested in the owls ; for by this time 
two or three more were hooting about me, all called 
in by the first comer. When they had gone I tried 
the strange call again. Instantly it was answered 
close at hand. The creature was coming. 



204 Ways of Wood Folk. 

I stole out into the middle of the opening, and sat 
very still on a fallen log. Ten minutes passed in 
intense silence. Then a twig snapped behind me. 
I turned — and there was Mooween, just coming into 
the opening. I shall not soon forget how he looked, 
standing there big and black in the moonlight ; nor 
the growl deep down in his throat, that grew deeper 
as he watched me. We looked straight into each 
other's eyes a brief, uncertain moment. Then he 
drew back silently into the dense shadow. 

There is another side to Mooween's character, 
fortunately a rare one, which is sometimes evident 
in the mating season, when his temper leads him to 
attack instead of running away, as usual ; or when 
wounded, or cornered, or roused to frenzy in defense 
of the young. Mooween is then a beast to be dreaded, 
a great savage brute, possessed of enormous strength 
and of a fiend's cunning. I have followed him wounded 
through the wilderness, when his every resting place 
was scarred with deep gashes, and where broken sap- 
lings testified mutely to the force of his blow. Yet 
even here his natural timidity lies close to the surface, 
and his ferocity has been greatly exaggerated by 
hunters. 

Altogether, Mooween the Bear is a peaceable fellow, 
and an interesting one, well worth studying. His 
extreme wariness, however, enables him generally to 



Mooween the Bear. 205 

escape observation ; and there are undoubtedly many 
queer ways of his yet to be discovered by some one 
who, instead of trying to scare the life out of him by 
a shout or a rifle-shot in the rare moments when he 
shows himself, will have the patience to creep near, 
and find out just what he is doing. Only in the 
deepest wilderness is he natural and unconscious. 
There he roams about, entirely alone for the most 
part, supplying his numerous wants, and performing 
droll capers with all the gravity of an owl, when he 
thinks that not even Tookhees, the wood-mouse, is 
looking. 



END OF FIRST SERIES. 



v::o 



